


Imperatum Vitae

by oracular_vernacular



Series: Ungentle Descent [2]
Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angry Kylo Ren, Angst, Angst and Porn, Dominant Kylo Ren, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Inappropriate Use of Lightsabers, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Moral Ambiguity, Original Character(s), Plot, Plot With Porn, Post-Battle of Starkiller Base, Power Dynamics, Sexual Tension, Shame, Slow Burn, Smut, Snoke Being a Dick, Snoke Ships It, Submissive Kylo Ren, That's Not How The Force Works, The Force Ships It, Voice Hearing, now with aftercare, then again neither is OC, this whole fic is a doubt tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-08-14 00:01:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 32,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20182891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oracular_vernacular/pseuds/oracular_vernacular
Summary: His hunt for Rey began with fury and the sharp edge of intent after the battle of Starkiller Base was lost. Staying hellbent on it kept him from noticing the ghosts at his back, kept him from listening to the voices in his head.Of course, if you're not paying attention, even ghosts can appear before you when you least expect them.





	1. Chapter 1

The _ Paramount _ was even more viciously outfitted than the _ Finalizer _ had been. The ship was only minimally of the old Resurgent-class Star Destroyer design. It was sleeker and smaller, but with as many guns and equipped with a Sonic Cannon, to boot. ** _It is the latest toy, and though it may prove useful it is but a flourish. _**The voice whispered into his ear, ever dismissive, ever critical, and ever present. Other voices sometimes spoke to him out of thin air, but the loudest one was always that one. 

Kylo Ren had marched through on the obligatory tour, learning the map of the ship’s interior and refreshing the details of its specifications in his mind. Now he stood in front of the doorway to the communicator room, a hologram transmission center set up for diplomatic meetings at a distance. He planned to contact the Supreme Leader to learn of his plans for the hunt for Rey.

“Knight Commander Ren,” came a voice, bustling up towards him before he had opened the door. He turned and saw a middle-aged man with a rank badge on his collar, walking rapidly towards him despite a look of pallid anxiety on his face.

“Yes, Colonel?” Ren asked sharply, annoyed at the interruption. He was tense, every muscle ached to be moving towards his goal.

“I’m afraid that your communications with the Supreme Leader have been cancelled,” the officer said, and when he felt the rise of anger from the Commander even through the mask, he hurriedly added, “by Supreme Leader Snoke himself.” Ren's malice did not ebb.

“Why?” Kylo demanded.

“I’m afraid he did not say, sir. He only wished me to inform you that a change of your crew at the last moment is in effect, and that you would be able to speak to the Imperator herself when she arrives to receive the details of the mission.”

For a moment of deadly silence, Ren stared at the man. The Colonel tried to steel himself, and actually did manage to look resolute, if a little pale.

“Imperator?” the Commander finally asked, his voice surprisingly calm. He was furious that his Supreme Leader would not allow him to seek an audience, but the presence of an unannounced eminent official caught him off-guard. ** _Is this Imperator some form of babysitter, keeping tabs on your progress, possibly reporting to the Admiral?_ ** The Admiral who could very possibly be Hux soon, he remembered with an involuntary twitch of aggravation.

“Yes, my lord. She is arriving even as we speak, and will most likely be on the bridge to greet you, sir,” the colonel said. “She is technically in command of…”

In the middle of his sentence, Kylo Ren turned around and stormed away at twice his usual hasty, tense pace. He headed directly for the bridge.

“Lord Ren, I…” one of the lieutenants attempted to greet him as he entered, but he shot past the man and made way directly towards the figure who was standing front and center on the command deck above the pilots and operators.

“The Imperator, I presume?” Ren asked, even more brusque than usual, particularly with a new high-ranking officer. This title, he realized, could technically even outrank him, though he wasn’t sure how it would work on a ship because Imperator was a title reserved for the Army, and a dated one at that. The fact that a decorated Army officer was suddenly on a Navy ship at all, much less _ his _ ship, filled him with an even, focused rage.

Slowly, the figure turned to face him. She was tall, clothed in a neatly fitted black uniform bodysuit with a soft armor half-vest that bore no decorations or indications of her rank. On her belt there was minimal equipment, and unlike the other officers she carried no blaster or weapon that he could see. She had no hair, what grew on her head was cut nearly to the scalp all around. Her shoulders were broad, and set in such a way as to make her figure intimidating, unfeminine, cold and strong. What was most unusual was the black mask that was covering the entire lower half of her face. It was made of a strange, malleable fabric acting almost like a non-mechanized breath filter over her nose and mouth. But her eyes remained exposed.

“Kylo Ren,” she said, her tone entirely neutral. Her voice was not altered by the cloth mask and sounded as though something must have broken it once, low and gravelly. As soon as he heard it, he felt a ripple through the Force. It was not a strong one, but the shock of it nearly put him off his feet. ** _Is she Force-sensitive? Or possibly… _ **“You have orders from Supreme Leader Snoke to begin the search for the girl-child Rey immediately. Here are the coordinates for your next target, the last planet where she was spotted.” Now she extended the infopad which she held in one hand towards him, her affect changing not at all in response to his furious presence. Ren took the infopad from her without looking at it.

“Who are you?” he asked her, his rage pooling in with deep curiosity and not a little suspicion. She stared at him, seeming to make eye contact with him despite his mask, and he noticed for the first time that her eyes were clouded with gray. She was blind. ** _And yet, she sees you._ **

“I am Imperator Kane Ares,” she replied, in the same even tone. “I am in military command of this ship. I am to act as your ship’s Captain and your personal counsel.”

“I need no counsel. It is my suggestion that you confine yourself to the duties of Captain and trouble me no further in matters regarding my mission,” Ren asserted, his anger flaring up again. The Imperator remained cool, almost icy.

“As you wish, Commander Ren,” she replied. “I will brief the command unit as we establish orbit.”

For a very long silence, so long that it left his subordinate officers twitchy with anxiety, he looked at her through the mask. ** _She does not argue? _ **Part of him felt let down, almost disappointed that there had been no confrontation. But perhaps that was mainly due to his being accustomed to near constant contestation from General Hux, and her presence was so utterly unlike his.

“Do you know how to captain a Navy vessel, Imperator?” he questioned. “Yours is an Army rank.”

“I captained a Navy vessel before I was reassigned to ground forces.” The tone of her voice was maddeningly calm. “The Supreme Leader would not have sent me here if I were unfit for the task.” 

“Good,” the Commander replied. As he turned to exit the bridge, he felt a small voice brush past his mind, wholly unlike the voices that he had always heard. _ You may find my assistance useful _. The slightest falter in his retreating steps betrayed his surprise, but he did not turn to look back at Imperator Ares. He had already decided not to appear confused or in any way uncertain about how to deal with her presence on the ship, and so this casual use of the Force was almost an underhanded attempt to put him on his back heel. The voices in his head were raging with questions. It was clear there was much more to her than she cared to divulge, but it would have to wait until they were no longer on the bridge of his ship.


	2. Chapter 2

When Ren entered the communicator room more than half an hour before the scheduled briefing, he had meant to attempt to contact the Supreme Leader. Instead, he found Imperator Ares already sitting at the circular table. She was directly opposite the entrance doors, but her chair was turned away from him, facing out the window. The ship had dropped out of hyperspace moments earlier, and the window now showed a planet of deepest blue slowly growing closer as they settled into orbit, half a dozen rings of asteroids and rubble around it.

“Imperator,” he greeted her tersely. ** _How did you not detect her presence with the Force? _ ** It meant that she was not only a Force-user, but a powerful one as well, which unsettled him. ** _To be fair, she cannot likely detect you, either._ **

“Lord Ren,” she replied, without turning to face him.

“Are you here because you sought to be alone? Or did you seek me?” he asked bluntly.

“Both, actually,” she replied, her broken voice catching on the “a” sound.

“Do you intend to explain yourself?” At this, Ares finally turned slightly towards him, but not enough to make her eyes visible. She still appeared to be looking out of the window, despite her blindness.

“In reference to my using the Force?” she asked.

“Yes.” When she took a moment to reply, he wondered if she was considering her words or if she was simply pausing for effect. It was impossible to tell, even for him.

“I have been ordered to assist you in your hunt for the girl,” she began. “My knowledge of the Force is of a particular use to you. It’s the old adage that two heads are better than one, but two like ours even better than that.”

“Whose orders are you under? It is highly unusual for a ranked military officer to also be trained in the ways of the Force,” he pointed out.

“I am under the direct command of Supreme Leader Snoke,” she answered, finally turning the chair around to face him. ** _Those gray eyes must be very unsettling to her underlings._ ** “Not unlike yourself. I have led a fleet of First Order Navy ships into battle on three planets, and emerged victorious. I have led a successful ground strike on four Resistance outposts. Thus I have been awarded the rank of Imperator, and it is not restricted to Army victories. I was operating on nearly the opposite side of the galaxy from yourself and General Hux for the majority of my career, which would be why you haven’t heard much of me.”

“Who trained you?” Ren was aware that his lack of formalities would fluster most commanding officers, even if he was technically their superior. In fact, he was quite used to driving General Hux to distraction. But Ares seemed, as usual, nonplussed.

“That is none of your concern. My orders do not center on my own use of the Force. They center on this mission.” Silence. Ren felt, despite the anger that clenched his jaw, that further needling would be pointless, and betray his frustration with his Supreme Leader. ** _Had Snoke taken her on as another apprentice? _ ** He felt his cheeks burn beneath his mask. ** _That is impossible, you would have felt it. Or perhaps she is a spy?_ **

“What assistance do you intend to provide?” he asked finally.

“Don’t think me an agent of the Resistance,” she said, a glimmer of wry smile passing over her eyes. “I have pulled every tooth from the head of more than one enemy. Through the Force, I perceived that the Resistance was assisting the girl. We now have some little evidence that my sight was correct. My skill with the Force is of a mental emphasis, and may be of use if we find her, among other things.”

He considered her for a moment, unwilling to believe that she had known what he was thinking despite her clear statement. ** _You are supposed to be trained against intrusion._ **

“_When _ we find her,” he said pointedly, “she is mine.”

“Undoubtedly,” Kane responded. “I would only act as a net. She doesn’t know who I am, and this is the advantage the Supreme Leader was thinking of, I believe, so I do not intend to throw it away. But I would not deny you province over what is to be done with her.” At this, Ren nodded, showing begrudging respect.

“In that case, I accept your assistance.”

At that moment, the doors slid open and the rest of the command unit of the _ Paramount _ entered the communicator room one by one, filling in the remaining chairs. Ren took his seat at her right hand, and as he moved Ares’ clouded eyes never left him. Once again he felt as if they pierced his mask. ** _You are getting paranoid, Ren._ **

“Greetings, gentlemen,” she began, her eyes seeming somehow to recede from him and take in the whole room. “This mission is to begin as soon as we establish orbit above Lehon. I want a full status update on the repair of the ship and of the command shuttle, to be certain that it is ready for Lord Ren’s departure.”

“The shuttle is prepared, Imperator,” answered a short, stout man. Mitaka. ** _A wonder he did not follow Hux on to whatever new assignment, licking his boots._ **

“All functions of the ship are within normal operating parameters. Weapons are in pre-assault state, all TIE fighter units are prepared for use, and the engines are in full working order post-light speed,” another Lieutenant, young and blonde, added.

“Excellent,” Ares said, without particular enthusiasm. “Now, gentlemen. The planet is difficult to access except by old byways, and our maps may prove unreliable due to the shifting nature of the debris. However, this creates a perfect sanctuary for the girl Rey to be hiding in. I want all of the exit coordinates from the byways monitored at all times, in the event that she or someone who knows of her attempts to flee the system.” Several heads nodded.

“The planet also appears to be steeped in some sort of Dark-side presence,” Ren spoke without warning. The other officers looked at him, seeming slightly surprised. One even jumped, a little. “The cause of it is uncertain. What do you make of this, Imperator?” He was testing her in front of her subordinates, of course, which was a tactic he’d watched General Hux employ many times. His meditations about Lehon had revealed the planet like a dark blot in the Force, which had made him very curious, and this seemed as good a time as any to make an impression on his new underlings and carry on in the dance of dominance with the Imperator.

“It would be a reasonable spot to test the girl against the Dark side, if she is in fact being trained. Otherwise, she may have been drawn here unwittingly,” Ares offered. ** _Interesting._ **

“Let us hope that she is still here, then,” Ren replied. “My power will only be aided by that presence, and even if she is accompanied our chances of success are all the greater.”

“How do you intend to proceed, Lord Ren?” Mitaka asked him.

“I will be taking a unit of troopers with me onto the surface of the planet. There is still an abundance of lowlifes and Rakata slavers on Lehon, so some force may be necessary. I will descend to the space port where she was spotted and investigate our information further. If the Imperator would be so kind as to maintain comlink presence, I plan to be in communication with the _ Paramount _ throughout this mission.” Of course, they had not established whether or not the Imperator would be joining him on the ground. He was keen to establish his control, so once again he tested her response. Ares raised an eyebrow at him, and whether she was smirking or simply baring her teeth beneath her mask was unclear.

“As you wish,” she replied. “Let us begin, then.”


	3. Chapter 3

When the command shuttle landed back in the primary hangar bay of the _Paramount_, it had not even fully touched ground before the exit door cracked open. By the time the ramp was extended, Kylo Ren was already halfway out, stomping with all of his incredible weight and strength. He was livid. He marched directly to the bridge, but his objective was nowhere in sight. 

“WHERE IS SHE?” he bellowed at Mitaka, who was at the command. The smaller man blanched visibly.

“Imperator Ares is in her office, sir,” he replied, and let out the breath he forgot he was holding as Ren whirled immediately in that direction and away from the Lieutenant. By the time he reached the door of her office, his light saber was drawn and he nearly cut his way in. His anger was everywhere, an overwhelming presence. As the remaining half of the door slid away from its freshly mangled opening, Ares stood up behind her desk.

“Enough,” she said, and though she spoke evenly her voice seemed louder and closer than it actually was.

“I ordered you to remain on board!” the Commander shouted at her, saber still crackling in his hand.

“And I did,” she replied. “I had only just left the command deck before you arrived.”

“Then why did I see you down there talking to that band of slavers?” he demanded. “The ones who were trying to converge on her ship?”

“Ren, are you angry because you think I defied your orders, or because the girl got away?” the woman replied evenly, voice quieter now but still deadly and close as though she was speaking into his ear.

“WHY WERE YOU DOWN THERE?” He approached her, striding around her desk to move in very close. For all her impressive bearing and build, he still towered over her in his robes and helmet. She looked up at him with those strange blind eyes that always seemed to see through his mask. 

“Commander,” she said, and though she sounded calm, the title hung in the air with a strange weight. Her words seemed to be coming to him in some way that was difficult to describe, like they were tunneling into his mind. “I assure you, I remained aboard this ship for the duration of your mission. I did, however, utilize the Force to contact one of my informants. It is possible that your own prowess with the Force means that you perceived my projection to him, and that is why you believe you saw me.” The hum of his saber ran like a white noise track behind her words. He looked at her, holding firmly onto his anger, but also slightly baffled. _**What is she talking about?**_

“What did you tell the slaver?” he asked, intent on remaining focused. In front of the subordinates was not a good time to act confused about how the Force worked.

“I told him nothing. I _ asked _ him where a certain shuttle was and when it had arrived. I relayed that information to you via comlink shortly afterwards.”

“His caravan tried to take the girl before I got to her, which is what allowed her to escape. She acted more suddenly and foolishly than she should have, but she did escape. In the _ Millennium Falcon _, no less. I am holding you responsible for this,” Ren stated harshly. 

“It is childish of you to blame me for the behavior of my informant, who is the one at fault here,” Ares retorted, and for the first time since he met her he could hear the edge of anger in her voice. “I am not responsible for his actions, nor the actions of his men. They were in direct violation of their contract, surely because they believed they could take their bounty and trade the girl to someone else for and additional sum. Since they are all dead by your hands, now, they’ve already paid the price for their mistake.”

“And what of the girl?” Ren growled. “The _ only _ objective was to find her, Ares. Now she is lost and the Supreme Leader will not be happy.”

“The _ Paramount _ is tracking her coordinates with experimental tech, and I have contacted several other leads already in anticipation of her next stop. That ship is not inconspicuous to the backwater scum of the galaxy, so it is only a matter of time before it is spotted again.”

“Experimental tech?”

“A lightspeed tracker that has been in development for some time. It may not work properly, which is why I have a network of informants. Regardless, we’ll know as soon as she makes landfall.” 

For a moment, Ren was silent. He even turned his saber off, since his anger was still broiling beneath a fragile lid, and he was utterly tempted to use it. ** _You’d better find the girl, Ren. You can’t fail. _ **

“When you have information, inform me immediately,” he directed.

“Of course,” Ares replied, and before she could say another word he stormed out of her office. The droids that were taking stock of the damage done to the door skittered away. Her gray eyes looked after him, before she released a frustrated sigh. 

“I don’t envy the supply officers on this ship,” she murmured, lifting a brow at the mess. 

~~~~~

Deep in the innards of the Paramount, during the small hours, the officer’s Combat Training Room was almost empty. It should have been totally empty, except that Kane Ares was there. She was barefoot, and stripped down to a basic black uniform body glove with her mask still covering the lower half of her face. She was drilling with an electrostaff, using the activated ends of the weapon to deflect minor blasts from a droid. Her movements were smooth, graceful, and precise, and seemed almost choreographed despite the randomized sequence of blast programmed into the droid. 

From his vantage point in the second story observation hall, Kylo Ren was watching her. He was in his blacks as well, without his usual heavy cloak and helmet. He had arrived at the training room with much the same purpose as the Imperator, but she had gotten there first. So he’d left the lights off to lurk, deeply curious as to what he would see. It was only a training room, so it was unlikely that anything he witnessed there would compare to her in battle, but it was clear that she had not been awarded her rank for no reason. ** _You ought to go down and spar with her, then you would really see what she can do. _ **But he ignored the voice’s suggestion, electing to learn what to expect before challenging a highly decorated ground forces officer. He had a feeling that his anger would show up, even if their combat was good-natured, and for the first time in countless years he knew in his gut that this woman could very possibly use that to her own advantage, because she was both skilled in battle and unnervingly calm. Even Hux would have flinched if the Commander had marched up to the redhead in his own office with his saber drawn. 

At the end of her last drill, she turned off the electrostaff and returned to a bench along the wall where her effects were laid out haphazardly. Leaning the staff against the wall, she turned to say something he couldn’t make out to the droid. It beeped and floated away. Just as Ren thought she was about to finish for the night, she began to walk back towards the center of the training area. She held something small, black, and made of metal in each of her hands. 

Without warning, the room was full of combat droids careening down at her from above, all firing at full capacity. Even as they began to rain down their blasts, she activated her weapons and began to move. Kylo’s eyes flew wide open as two brilliant orange blades sang through the air, deflecting every inch of fire and sending blasts ricocheting back into the droids.

** _Those are fucking light sabers! _ **

Two of them, in fact, wielded like very long knives, with short and slightly curved handles. He knew that historically some Jedis had used one long saber and one shorter light dagger in a very ancient combat form that had been a subset of Makashi, the dueling form. But this was not quite like that, in fact it was unlike anything he had ever seen. All of her motions were fluid, flowing into one another effortlessly, hyper aware of her surroundings as if she was trying (and succeeding) to anticipate where every blast would fall. 

For a moment, he was too transfixed to be angry. But then, he felt something twist in his gut. It was worse than anger. It was _ jealousy _ . ** _She had to have been trained by Snoke. There’s no other way to explain why she’s using those weapons, why she is so far up in the ranks of the Order, why she is so skilled with the Force. But why would he not tell you if he had another apprentice? Are you so disposable to him? _ **Part of him wondered if she had been trained even more than he had, since her skillset was so profound, but another part of him was beginning to think that she had just been trained very differently. He had learned to harness his pain as a tool to access and fuel his power. His actions were more reactions, volatile and spurred by his feelings. His emotions were the seat of the Force inside of him. But Kane Ares was not an emotional creature, or at least if she was they were so deep down inside of her that they hadn’t seen daylight for a long time. She had already told him that her abilities were of a particularly mental nature, and the more he witnessed the more that made sense. 

He let out a low snarl, glaring at her from his hidden vantage. ** _We’ll see about this. _ **For once, in his anger, he felt the urge not to break everything, but to try something more subtle. To test her. He glanced at one of the droids, paying attention to its stuttering rate of fire, and then he reached out with his mind. He didn’t do much, only nudged one of the blasts in a direction it wasn’t meant to go, to see how she responded. 

With a sudden movement that was so intense that he could feel its tug on the air around her, the Imperator managed to twist herself out of her graceful spiral and catch the errant blast. Before he could be impressed, however, the blast struck the glass that was several feet in front of him. It was, of course, proofed against such fire, so there was a sputter of light and a zap of power and then nothing, the glass remaining unscathed. He sucked in his surprise in one long, heavy inhale, realizing he’d taken a step back away from the danger his instincts had perceived.

Down below, the blaster fire came to a halt as the last combat droid was disabled in a flash of its own firepower, powering low into sleep mode and floating slowly down to the floor. Ares stood there with both orange sabers still drawn, feet planted wide, facing away from him. He half expected her to look up at him with her blind eyes. ** _She sees with the Force. She knows you’re there._ **

Even though he felt the voice in his head was right, she did not turn to look. After a pause that felt a hundred years long, she deactivated her weapons and strode over to the bench to gather her things. The disabled droids all returned through an opening in the tall, white wall on the other side of the training room, to be repaired by other droids for the following day. Pulling her black bag over her shoulder, Ares picked up the electrostaff and exited the training hall. She even turned the lights out, plunging the Knight Commander into nearly total darkness. For a long few moments, he simply stood there trying to process what he had just seen.

“Fuck,” he growled.


	4. Chapter 4

Ares stood in the dark bedroom of her officer’s suite, in front of the massive window showing the dull reddish crescent of the desert moon the Paramount was in orbit above. It was 0300 by the clock, well before she was due on the bridge, but sleep was no friend of hers. She knew she would not rest before her day officially began, anyway. Her informant had only just contacted her to say that the  _ Millennium Falcon _ had left atmo only moments before their arrival. She sighed in frustration.

It was always easy to tell where Kylo Ren was if his mind was bent on her. It took much more effort if his thoughts were elsewhere. He was down on the planet below with his elite unit at that moment, still in pursuit of his quarry. She wondered who this girl-child was, that he was so bent on her. The events at Starkiller base had no doubt left their mark of shame on him, as the story was widespread (in all its colorful variations) across the First Order and likely the rest of the known galaxy as well, right along with his famous temperament. She wondered if that was all that motivated him, though he was so volatile that it seemed like it would be enough. Snoke, too, was bent on her, but all he made clear was that her potential needed to be harnessed for his own purposes before it could be harnessed elsewhere.  _ Just as you harnessed my own, and this Kylo Ren’s as well,  _ she thought. The dust of her hatred of her master stirred in her heart, but only just.

She knew the instant that he was heading straight for her, of course. Even as far below as the planet, Ren’s intentions were clear. He was, in fact, delightfully transparent in his intent even without the assistance of the Force’s sight. She moved away from the window into the deeper shadow of her room, pulling her mask off of the bedside table and then over her head.  _ What is hidden is powerful _ . The thought came unbidden to her every time she donned or removed the mask, so relentlessly had it been conditioned into her. Clearly, she thought, she was not the only recipient of this message, as Kylo Ren also kept his face hidden. 

It did not take him long to arrive at her door, and she was surprised that he did not cut it open this time. He even used the comlink to announce himself.

“Open the door.” She might be annoyed, if she had actually been sleeping. She walked through the little sitting room of the suite, which was barely separated from the bed chamber by a fourth of a wall, and pressed the button. The door slid open, casting a rather stark light on her form against the darkness behind.

“Commander,” she greeted him tersely.

Beneath the mask, Ren was feeling disoriented by the sight of the Imperator in her regulation underclothes. It was nothing particularly erotic, only a ribbed black tank top and a pair of black briefs. But her form was both shapely and muscular, broad shoulders and hips cinched by a narrow waist and flowing into powerful legs. Her breasts were small and pert, and the chill air of the corridor had stood her nipples on end before she crossed her arms over them in her mild annoyance. He was surprised at how quickly this aroused him, despite the fact that she was also wearing her mask, which he thought a little strange.  ** _Is this another of her attempts to get under your skin? Because it’s clearly working. _ ** The voice stoked his anger enough that he managed not to falter. 

“The girl is no longer on the planet.” His voice was sharp, on the edge of shouting.

“Yes, I received that information some five minutes before you did. I have coordinates for her next refueling station, luckily. They’ve been relayed to the navigation officers already.” She let her frustration with the situation show in her voice, this time. It was nearly disappointing, she realized, that this might actually hamper the violence of his reaction. There was something satisfying about his rage, about being the object of its electrifying intensity, how close he stood when he tried to intimidate her. 

“This would be better news if we had not missed her twice, now,” he replied in a loud growl, clenching his fists. 

“I will report to the Supreme Leader,” she said opaquely. This was perhaps even more confusing than her state of undress, because it read for all the world like she was sparing him the blow. His master had indeed not been happy to hear his last report of Rey’s escape.

“I do not require your pity, Imperator,” he spat, looming closer to her. He was so  _ big, _ she thought. 

“Then you will receive none of it,” she hissed back, and the door slammed shut before he could reply. He let out a roar, and sent his fist flying into the door. The officer’s suites were protected rather more thoroughly than the general crew’s quarters, so his knuckles left only an indentation in the blast-resistant metal, but Kane fumed on the other side as she turned and stalked back into the dimness of her room.

“Petulant  _ child _ ,” she muttered, heading for the refresher to turn on a scalding hot shower. But her skin was flushed, her nipples still pointed and her skin turned to gooseflesh even as the chill from the doorway dissipated. 

On the other side of the door, Knight Commander Ren stood vibrating with fury. He closed his eyes for a moment against the tightness in his trousers, and then swept away past the officers that had accompanied him back to his own suite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaand the slow burn begins.... thank you for your patience....


	5. Chapter 5

The room was drenched in inky darkness, only the pinpricks of the stars shone in through the window. Kylo Ren woke from a dead sleep, with much less of a jolt than usual. It was as though his eyes simply opened, and it took him a moment to realize they had done so. As he lay there for a few moments, something slowly began to cast a dull light-- outside, a nearby moon that was barely lit by the star at the center of the system crept into view. That illumination only threw the room into faint, chaotic shadows. He sat upright, rubbing his face with his hands. When he looked up, Kane Ares was standing in front of him at the foot of the bed.

“Are you here to kill me?” he asked her plainly. Her face was expressionless and still half covered with its mask, but she was wearing a long black robe instead of her usual more trim uniform garments. She moved closer, taking slow steps around the corner of his bed.

“No,” she replied, and her voice did not seem quite the same. It was less broken, somehow, or maybe melded with some other voice in his head. In his sleepiness he was unsure which. Was her robe not tied?

“Then what do you want?” His tone wasn’t sharp. In fact, he sounded almost like he actually wanted to know the answer to his question. She continued to take slow steps, methodical, like a wild predator who was sizing up its prey.

“I want to know more about you.” As she took her next step, one side of her robe caught against the fabric of the bed sheets, and it was tugged open slightly. In the gloom he was uncertain, but he thought he saw a long sliver of pale skin, as though she was nude beneath. He blinked, and as she took her next step he realized that she was, in fact, nude, as the fabric tugged wider apart. 

“Like what?” he asked finally, his next breaths coming in harder even as he tried to sound angry. She was stepping closer, one leg stepping fully outside of the robe, one nipple appearing above it, the sleeve falling down off of her shoulder. Her gray eyes roved over his skin, the muscles of his massive shoulders and chest, the veins running over the tops of his large hands. Now she really did look like a predator, but he was beginning to feel strongly that he wanted to be the one hunted. He felt himself begin to grow hard beneath the sheet draped over his lower half, and he made no effort to hide it.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Finally she was in front of him, inches away, and she reached out a hand to his face. She ran the nail of her first finger down his cheek, then down his neck. It left a burning scratch of a trail in its wake, excruciatingly slow, winding his guts up inside him. He sucked in a breath, looking wantonly at the skin of her chest, her large and erect nipples at eye level, and she sank down to sit in front of him on the bed. Her gray eyes had a gravity of their own, pulling his brown ones into them. “Don’t you want to know more about me?”

“Much more,” he replied in a low voice. Her nail made its way down over his clavicle and chest, hovering in the middle of his torso. 

“Like what?” she asked, almost coyly. Kylo’s head was beginning to get fuzzy. He realized that one of his hands was running the tips of his fingers over her torso, around one nipple, up to her neck where the mask gave way to a cowl. The fabric was almost slippery, and softer where it draped over her collarbone. He dimly recognized his burning curiosity to know what her face looked like. 

“I want to see you,” he murmured, approaching a growl flush with desire. Her hand was lingering very close to his groin, and he felt like a string pulled taut. She looked at him, her eyes intent on his, leaning closer. He realized how much he wanted to claim her mouth, taste the skin of her.

“Do you?” It was almost a challenge. 

“Yes.” In that moment, he tugged the black mask down.

Gasping, Kylo Ren awoke with the same start he always did, covered in a thin layer of sweat and with his cock demanding his attention. He felt an acute and inexplicable distress that he could not remember what Ares’ face looked like at the end of the dream. He rubbed his eyelids vigorously, snarling at the light of the planet below that had drifted into view of his window since he’d gone to bed, and began to stroke himself. 


	6. Chapter 6

Walking onto the command deck the next morning, Ren was extra bristly. The dream hung in the back of his mind, as dreams are wont to do, and he did not like it.  ** _Seduction doesn't seem like her style, if she’s trying to get into your head. But why else would you dream something like that? Have you got a crush? _ ** Beneath his helmet, he rolled his eyes at the voice that teased him. The Imperator seemed as cool as ever. She did not greet him as he approached her.

“How long until we arrive at Katraasii?” she asked.

“Twenty-five minutes, Imperator,” replied a lieutenant at the navicomputer. “The Patrol at the space port has been ordered to ground all ships.”

“Do you think they are likely to abide by that?” she replied, but the edge in her voice made it clear that the question was rhetorical. Katraasii had been occupied by the Empire for some time, never without coercion. It was home to one of the largest and oldest space ports in the Outer Rim, close to the Unknown Regions, making it an ideal place to keep an eye on the border for threats. Still, the planet had not been subjugated easily.

“Status report,” the Commander demanded brusquely. Mitaka turned to him from his position on the left flank of the command deck.

“Our last coordinates from the tracking device place the target at Katraasii, Lord Ren. We have a confirmed sighting of the ship there as well,” he said. “We have ordered all traffic grounded at the space port, and your command shuttle is prepped for departure.”

“Good. Perhaps the trap is closing, at last,” Ren growled through his mask, turning to look at Ares. Her gray eyes remained on the viewport, the rush of starlight reflected there.

“I plan to go to the surface myself this time, Commander.” She was not challenging him, but her statement left no room for argument, either.  ** _She seems more interested in completing the mission than in testing you. _ ** He eyed her curiously.

“I’m sure your presence will be useful,” he replied. 

~~~~~

The space port was as crowded as any on the Rim, but the unit of storm troopers was given a wide berth. Beside Ren, Ares was like a living shadow, wrapped in a cloak with the heavy hood covering almost all of her face that the mask did not already. Her boots made no sound as she walked, though they did leave an impression in the dirt. 

“I’m going to search the shipyard,” he informed her. She nodded, not looking at him.

“I am going to find my contact. I’ll maintain a link.” And with that, the Imperator peeled off from the group, making towards the main structure of the space port where the supply unit, Patrol office, and cantina would be. Ren watched her for just a moment before he returned to focus on his purpose.

Inside the cantina, Ares approached a human man in a dirty jumpsuit who was sitting at one end of the bar alone.

“If you plan to collect your coin today, Bashar, I suggest you walk with me.” He looked over his cup at her, eyes bloodshot.

“Oh, uh, you’re already here,” he noted. Ares let her eyes show beneath the hood for long enough to make her otherworldly glare very obvious, and began to walk away. Trying to suppress a cough, Bashar slapped a couple of coins on the bar and shuffled off his stool behind her. “Did you find what you’re looking for?”

“Not yet,” Ares replied coolly. “That is rather why I am here to speak to you, good man.”

“Oh yeah? How can I help?” But sweat was beginning to bead on his brow.

“Have you seen the ship itself?”

“Oh sure, this morning when it landed.”

“You are lying.” He blanched as she turned to look at him again, and realized that they had stopped in a very desolate alley in the back of the complex. Over a nearby wall was the shipyard, the tops of ships peeking over it. Just at that moment a sudden humming sound could be heard, followed by a sputtering of electricity, crashing metal, and screams. The man’s eyes darted between the woman before him and the wall where the sounds were, starting to panic. “Would you care to refine your story?” she asked, not turning behind her to look.

“I never saw it!” Bashar admitted, his face growing more terrified. “I only saw who was flying it!”

“The girl?” Kane’s gaze was fixed on him now, and he felt his skin begin to crawl.

“Yeah, and the other one, the Wookie!”

“Did you speak to them?”

“Yeah, they sold me a case of blaster parts and some scrap metal for next to nothin’. I swear!” He was sweating profusely now, unable to look away from her despite his intense desire to run.

“Are those things on your ship?” To her great surprise, the man began to whimper, but said nothing. She lifted a brow. “Impressive that you would even consider not answering my question, Bashar.” She held up one hand lazily, palm towards him, and he let out a bellowing howl.

“No no no nonono stop! Please! I’ll show you! I’ll show you! Please stop!” he began to wail, and rub his eyelids with his hands frantically. “Fuck, they’re all over me, please take them away!” He began to frantically swat and scratch himself. Ares lifted her communicator to her face.

“The yellow ship, the G9, has a black case in the storage bay. Bring it to me.” She lowered it again, shaking her head as Bashar began to burble and sob, his dirty nails leaving bloody trails on his own cheeks and arms. “This was a poor time for your long-forgotten loyalty to re-emerge,” she said to him as he doubled over, screaming. Her eyes did not leave him even as Kylo Ren approached from one of the shipyard gates, white armor shuffling behind him. One of the troopers came forward, holding the black case in question.

“It’s gone,” the Commander informed her, furious. Ares did not reply, only took the case and pulled it open. Inside was a hunk of mangled metal and wire, pulled from whatever tech it had been attached to, three red lights still blinking at its center.  ** _The lightspeed tracker. They found it._ **

“These are the devil to remove, Bashar. You are a fool, but you were always a gifted technician. Seems a pity.” Ren watched her speak to the man who was now writhing in the dirt before her, filling the air with inhuman noises, biting at his own bleeding arm, wracked by some invisible horror. She shut the case, handing it back to the trooper, and began to walk away. “It’s too late,” she called back to them without looking. “They left hours ago, maybe days ago. Our trail is cold.” 

Kylo looked back at the man, presumably her traitorous informant, who was deteriorating rapidly and would soon begin tearing his own skin off, it seemed.  ** _Well. At last the Imperator shows you something of that fearful temper she keeps so well collared. She would leave him here to maul himself to death. That is truly cruel._ ** The crackling hum of his light saber filled the air, and seconds later the screaming stopped. 

~~~~~

Back on the Paramount, the Knight Commander sat in the pilot’s seat of the command shuttle after it docked inside the ship’s hangar bay. Kane had dismissed the troopers immediately, but lingered behind in the shuttle when he did not rise to exit as well. Eventually, she entered the cockpit and stood behind him silently. He felt no anger from her, but that was all the better since he felt more than enough of his own, the shouts and jabs of the voices ringing in his ears. For a while, he said nothing.

“You said the trail was cold.” It was a statement, but the question was behind it. 

“Yes,” Ares replied. 

“How?”

“One of the courses plotted for her ship in the docking records was for the edge of colonized space, plunging right into the Unknown Territories. The other one was routed back to Lehon. Of course, there should only have been one in the first place. She was sending us in circles, and there is no map for where she was really going. We have no way of locating her without the tracker.”

“Then we should  _ annihilate _ every habitable system in the Unknown Territories!” Ren slammed his fists on the dashboard. “Except the fucking Resistance already destroyed our superweapon, didn’t they?” He was growing unreasonable, he knew. He could feel the cliff of blind rage approaching.  ** _You never did learn to control yourself. _ ** The Imperator said nothing, which just made him angrier. He stood up suddenly and whirled on her, already close due to the cramped nature of the cockpit. “What good were you to me again,  _ Imperator _ ?” He spat the title at her. She stared up at him through her eyebrows, her own fury beginning to bristle out at him. 

“I will suffer as much as you for this failure, Ren,” she snarled. “We both serve the same master.” Reminding him vividly of his impending punishment did nothing to soothe him.

“If I killed you first, I’d be doing you a favor,” he growled, and before he could think his gloved hand shot up around her neck and began to squeeze her throat through the fabric. She didn’t flinch, didn’t even break her gaze away from his mask. 

“ _ Try _ ,” she hissed to him viciously, struggling for air, her whole body crackling with electricity.  _ Please, you drooling hound. Try.  _ He felt the words land in his mind, foreign from the voices that sounded off around him. He felt his nerves light up, his core tighten, and increased his grip on her neck in response to her challenge.

“Should I break you first?” he asked her, pushing her back into the wall of the shuttle. “Make you beg to live?” Her eyelashes fluttered as he pushed right up against her, all the heat in her body suddenly pooling in her groin. A strangled laugh escaped her.  _ I’d like to see your meager attempt at such a thing.  _ In response, he started lifting her up the wall by his hold on her throat, and his heart began to pound in his ears as splitting pain speared into his head.  ** _There she is. Finally resisting. _ **

_ Pitiful creature, you bite when you’re afraid, don’t you?  _ At this, he let out a snarl, and shoved a knee between her legs to push her up the wall farther, to pin her against it like an insect. It was only when he realized that there was dampness there, pooling at the apex of her thighs through her uniform, that he stopped and realized that his cock was straining against its confinements.  ** _All those insults really got you going, Ren? Then again, maybe she has a crush, too. She’s dripping for you._ **

When he moved his leg and dropped her neck unceremoniously, Kane began to cough as she regained her breath and her footing. The pain in his head subsided, and he got the strangest feeling when he realized that she had been holding back, even  _ enjoying  _ his aggression as much as he was beginning to enjoy choking her. His dream came flooding back to him, filling him with confusion that only added to his rage. Unable to fathom what was happening, he simply turned and stormed out of the shuttle.

Ares sank to her knees as she continued to cough, one hand slipping between her legs.  _ Oh. Shit.  _ That would explain the urge to egg him on, stoke his anger, which was something she rarely indulged in except at very key moments. It might also explain why she struggled to control that impulse. Her cunt throbbed under the cloth, and she hauled herself upwards to make for her own chambers immediately.

“Imperator? What are your orders?” asked Mitaka over the comlink. The sound of his trill little voice irritated her almost immediately as she marched through the door and it slid shut behind her. 

“Stand by until further orders,” she barked into the communicator, then turned it off and threw it onto the floor of her room. Peeling away her uniform piece by piece, she touched the erect button of her clit as she fell backwards onto her bed. The pressure of his giant hand on her throat swam in her mind, the musky scent of him, the throb of his anger, the crush of his weight against her as he pinned her to the wall, one powerful leg compressing the nexus of her inexplicable desire.

_ Try to break me, Kylo Ren. I just want to see if you can _ , she thought, smothering a groan into her pillow as her hand began to work faster.


	7. Chapter 7

In the refresher in his quarters, Ren was sitting slumped in the shower as hot water pounded his head and chest and steam clotted the air in the room. He stared at his feet on either side of the drain, or really he stared past them into an abyss.

_ “A third failure on your part is inexcusable,” Snoke had railed. “You are less than a ghost of your lineage, young fool. Do you know what you have cost the First Order? What you have cost me?” _

_ Kneeling before the holo projector, helmet in his hand, he had stared at the ground with his face scarlet red in shame. His head was splitting, the barb of his master’s wrath sending pain throughout his body even light years apart. _

_ “Please, Master, let me continue to search for her,” he had pleaded. _

_ “No. If you fail me again, I will remove the possibility of it happening any more.” The voice was cold, without sympathy. “You will return to the _ Supremacy _ , to prepare for when we find the rest of the Resistance.” _

_ “What of the girl?” _

_ “What of her?” Snoke asked mockingly. “You will have to continue your training so that you may be prepared for whatever happens when she returns. For return, she will. I have forseen it. You and Kane Ares will be trained together. And I must drive you twice as hard, so you do not shame me any longer, boy.” The promise of violence was clear in his words. _

_ “Master, I--” _

_ But the room had gone silent, the projector turning itself off as the connection was terminated. For what felt like an eternity, he knelt in the gloom, filled with anguish as the voices in his head turned to gleeful vitriol. _ **You are pitiful, Ren. A Solo through and through, no matter how hard you try. You will be nothing, just like your father. **

_ “SHUT UP!” he screamed, throwing his helmet and pressing his hands into either side of his head as if to squeeze out the cacophony. When that failed, he pounded his fists into the floor, utterly defeated. When he finally could bear it no longer, he had grabbed his helmet and put it back on before exiting holodeck, sweeping through the _ Paramount _ like a storm front that slammed all in its way into the walls of the corridors. _

His jaw worked as he sat there, the voices still ruminating in his mind, still laughing at him and hating him and coldly dismissing him. He wondered if he would ever reach the part of channeling one’s emotions where he could also retain his conscious intent. Han Solo, the object of so much of his pain, was eliminated. Yet he felt no closer to mastery of himself, only sinking deeper into the quagmire of his self-hatred. The shower had been his attempt to ground himself, to numb out the voices and just feel how much it hurt now that he was deep in his lair, protected from vulnerability to any but himself.

In her own quarters, Kane Ares was also sitting in the shower of her refresher, albeit on the other side of the cascade, her feet turning red from the hot water. Her cloudy eyes looked nowhere, sweat and condensing vapor running down her forehead and dropping from her eyelashes in a mimicry of tears. She had not actually wept in so long.

_ “My girl,” hissed the voice venomously. “You, I expected much better of.” _

_ Ares had been standing in front of Snoke’s throne, or her projection had, but her master was so powerful with the Force that she may as well have been there in the flesh. He reached out to wrap his long, terrible fingers around her masked jaw, nails biting into her flesh, and tilted her face up from the floor to look at him. “Between my two great proteges, yours is the most cunning mind. How did she elude you?” _

_ “Our tech was not reliable. And, she has help,” Ares replied softly. _

_ “Of course she does!” bellowed Snoke, staring furiously into her eyes. As he expected after years of brutality, she did not flinch as he nearly lifted her feet from the floor by his grip on her face, then dropped her. Standing to his full, imposing height, he looked above her at nothing in particular, a snarl on his face. “So did you. And yet, she is vanished off the edge of the known galaxy.” _

_ “There is no excuse, Master.” _

_ “No, there isn’t.” This was precisely the reply she had expected, but that did not mean that he didn’t want to hear her say it anyway. She knew her master very well, by now. “When you return to me with Kylo Ren, we will resume your training much more aggressively. Both of you. The Resistance fleet has amassed, and once we find them we will crush them before they flee.” _

_ “Yes, Master.” _

He had sent her careening back into her body where it sat on the hard white shower floor, her head knocking back into the wall. She could feel the bruises forming along her chin. She hated how he cowed her, even though it had been over two decades since she consciously experienced the emotion of fear. How he had embedded her compliance into her body, since her mind would not be so fully subjugated. As she always did in moments like these, she plumbed her memories for even one shred of something that would give her life a purpose other than to follow his will. But there was so little left before she was found dying, and taken in by the First Order.

Somewhere in the darkest recesses of her mind, for the first time in her life, she found a thread of something. _ What? What is that? _Every impulse she had urged her to chase the feeling, the ephemeral thread of something that might have once been a memory. Like a tunnel she flew through it, lost in the unuttered hope that it might lead her somewhere, anywhere but here.

When Ares raised her head, she was met with two beautiful, sad, dark eyes on a long pale face above a prominent nose and plush lips, one long scar running from cheek to forehead. A young man was sitting in front of her in the shower, drenched in the fall of the water. He looked as shocked as she was, her breath hitching and her heart pounding. For the briefest moment, she thought she knew that face. 

In his shower, Kylo Ren had looked up at the wall only to meet another gaze. Dark eyes, wide with surprise, above a button nose and soft round “o” of a mouth, a halo of dark hair around her head. She was sitting on the other side of the refresher shower, staring at him. A face he had labored long to forget. 

But they blinked, and found themselves staring at blank white walls. 

“_ No _,” Kane breathed softly, gray eyes wide, one hand reaching out to the wall to touch it and be sure it was real. Snoke had found her blinded, and taught her profound Force sight as a response to her limitation. But it meant that sometimes, when another Force-user was powerful enough to manipulate her, she saw things that were not really there. She knew this, and had begun to understand that her own perception shaped what she saw as much as the will of any other. But this had been vivid, like a visual memory, not like the pseudo-visual images the Force showed her. A forgotten name like an unfinished thought trailed behind it, but even as she searched for the memory, the clear details of the face began to fade. “No, no no.”

Kylo sat, frozen, speechless. Then he rubbed his eyes, but the ghost was gone. _**What else could it be, if it wasn’t a ghost?**_ His face began to curl up into a grimace as tears filled his eyes.

“Have you not tortured me enough?” he hissed, and he did not even care if Snoke saw his thoughts. The violent turmoil of emotions he held for his master began to coalesce into hatred, and he bellowed into the soundproofed echochamber of his suite, every voice in his head screeching in unison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what would a Kylo fic be without a little (or a lotta) angst??? thanks everyone, for reading along. it means a lot to me!


	8. Chapter 8

Much as they’d expected, the first day of “training” after Commander Ren and Imperator Ares arrived on the  _ Supremacy _ was mostly just drilling them both to exhaustion. If there was any point beyond punishment, neither of them thought much about what it was. He did not pit them against one another yet, and in fact they had not even seen one another since being received from the  _ Paramount _ .

The second day was much the same. Then the third, and the fourth, and the fifth were also. The drills were both physical and mental, both combat and discipline in using the Force. By the start of the sixth day, the weariness had all but settled into their bones.

Ares was early to the training hall and moving slowly that morning, but it seemed intentional. Reminding herself of how to push and pull and flow with the Force, she moved in deliberate, careful sequence through the most basic movements of staff combat. She was in her blacks, mask over her face as always. Ren, on the other hand, was in his suite trying to meditate for once. Not to clear his mind, but to focus on his hatred. To distill it, purify it, and cement it in his chest. To crystallize it, and refract the power of the Force through it. Both of them had collapsed back into what they knew best. He looked gravely at the crumpled remains of his grandfather’s helmet, but the weight of purpose that had once surrounded it seemed depleted. He stood to dress himself fully, don his helmet, and face the day he was too tired to dread.

Ren entered the training hall to see Ares’ form moving gracefully and precisely with a deactivated electrostaff.  ** _So, today’s the day. _ **

As she completed the last motion of her routine, she returned to a neutral position with the staff in her hand and then turned to face him. It struck him that he had not given much thought to her since their mission was deprioritized, had not even spoken to her since their baffling encounter on the command shuttle. Something about seeing her again twisted in his chest, making him uncomfortable.

Without warning, Ares dropped the electrostaff in her hand and sprinted towards him, drawing her two orange blades. She gave a battle cry that was abbreviated by her half-broken vocal chords. Eyes flying wide open beneath his mask, Ren drew his own enormous red saber reflexively, and began defending himself from the volley of strikes she rained down onto him.

** _This might be her paying you back for choking her, Ren. _ ** The voice was laughing sardonically as she engaged him relentlessly and he blocked, pushing her back deeper into the wide training hall. Something about her movement resembled a leaf curling on the wind, as though her entire body centered on an axis that let her spin and duck and leap all around him. He was breathless to keep up with her, but at the same time he had a feeling that she wasn’t trying anything new or changing the rules, yet. Not trying to surprise him. 

Finally he managed to block her and hold her blade with his own for a moment, and her gray eyes bore holes into his mask for a moment. Then he swung against her with a shout, pushing with reckless Force energy, and she went flying backwards into the wall.  ** _Holy shit, you managed to land a good one on her. _ ** Like a cat, Ares landed in a crouch on her feet, sabers still brandished, and looked up at him through her brows. She looked positively feral, and just the same as it had before, it pushed a flush of heat down through his lower torso.  ** _This is a bad time to get a hard on, you know._ **

Luckily, she had taken a flying leap towards him, and he had to respond before he could become too anxious about the dance of anger and arousal that seemed to plague him whenever she was involved. She spun both sabers and it took everything in him to deflect one and then the other while still keeping his arms attached to his body.

“Good! Good!” laughed a familiar, foul voice from the opposite end of the training hall. Snoke was standing there watching, and began clapping slowly. “Carry on, my apprentices! Do your best to survive each other!”  ** _He thinks this is hilarious, doesn’t he?_ **

And then she was whirling back on him, and he had to defend himself and somehow turn the tables and get  _ her _ on the defensive, and that was all he could think about.

The Imperator was calm, focused, and full of venomous anger. When he managed to send her crashing backwards into the wall, though, she’d felt herself begin to light up. That energy which had caused her to goad him in the command shuttle was back, but this time she was on the offensive. Heat flushed her face and her low belly, and she was driven by the desire to pin him down the way he had pinned her as she rained blows down on him. She was impressed with how well he stayed with his defense, and knew that he was going to seek to turn that around, and knew that if he did, she stood a fifty-fifty chance of being murdered, such was the anger that poured off of him.

“AI!” she shouted, a clipped version of her previous battle cry. He started swinging harder and harder, and his strength was truly staggering. She fell back on feinting, making her next strike unpredictable, since he had already shown his ability to repel her if he only tugged at the Force with the right blow. 

** _Haven’t you heard that before somewhere? _ ** He was keeping up with her style change, however barely at first, but the sound of her cry seemed strangely familiar. He had fought many battles, heard many warriors cry out before they renewed their offensive maneuvers. Perhaps it was one of those cries, but some part of him doubted it. It reminded him of…

He was on his back before he could finalize the thought, and his face burned with a mixture of shame and fury.  ** _You got distracted, Ren. You look like a fool. _ ** One of her bare feet was pressed into his solar plexus with more pressure than her body belied, and one of her orange blades was humming not three inches from his left ear while the other one was positioned over the wrist of his right hand. Somehow he’d even managed to lose his grip on his saber, which was lying a few feet away. 

It was another heartbeat before he realized that the reason his breaths were coming in so cold all of a sudden was because his fall had somehow knocked his helmet off, and it had rolled away towards the edge of the training area. His brown eyes, so sad in the rest of his stern features, looked up Ares. Her cloudy eyes flew wide open, then her brow knit, as though several emotions passed through her one after the other. The last expression was mostly confusion, as far as he could tell.  ** _Why does everyone always look so surprised to see your face? You can’t be _ ** **that** ** _ ugly. _ **

His next instinct had been to call his light saber back to his off-hand to surprise her, but she lept off of him and backed away several steps, shutting off her weapons. That look of confusion and suspicion in her eyes only deepened as he staggered to his feet.  ** _What is she staring at? Does she recognize you from somewhere? Where in hell could that possibly be?_ **

“The Resistance fleet has been located,” a voice cut through the air, and both of his apprentices turned to look at the Supreme Leader. “The two of you will prepare to join General Hux and Captain Canaday, who have already launched their assault. So, we shall wipe the Resistance from the face of the galaxy.” 

“Yes, master,” they both said in unison. Kylo looked back at Kane, but she had already turned away and was exiting the training hall. 

“Go,” Snoke growled at him.


	9. Chapter 9

The Imperator was in her suite on the  _ Supremacy _ as they catapulted through space towards D’Quar, where the Resistance base had been located. She sat on one of the couches in the living room area, still in her training clothes, her eyes looking nowhere. Her mind was much worse than a fog, it was a jumbled array of thoughts that scrambled to play over top of one another. 

When the mask had fallen from Kylo Ren’s face, something strange had happened. She had seen the face that she’d seen before in the shower, a face she thought- no, she  _ knew- _ that she knew. There had been no alteration in his presence in the Force, no ripple in the cloud of determination and anger that surrounded him. He had not taken off the mask with the intention of revealing himself, and so nothing had been revealed about him through the Force. Only the impression of him now had a face, vivid like the memory she had uncovered before.

Nothing had prepared her for the flood of emotions that a prolonged look at that face would bring crashing over her. She felt pangs of sorrow, elation, terror, love, white-hot anger. It had all coalesced into shock, and she had retreated here to try and parse the experience. But it became no clearer, and each broken shard of a memory stung like glass. There was nowhere that she felt love, that she did not also feel anger. No wave of sorrow without profound joy and relief. An intense desire to go to him, to touch that face and be sure it was real, was accompanied by enormous guilt she did not understand.

“Who are you?” she whispered to the air. All of a sudden, there was a chirp at her door. Someone was ringing to be let in. She ignored it, rubbing her forehead in both her hands. This was going to have to stop before they arrived, there was no way she would be able to concentrate with her guts so twisted up with overwhelming confusion.

The door chirped again. She let out a barely audible growl, willing whoever was on the other side to go away. But she couldn’t even remain in her anger. Even as it began to bristle through her, her eyes would water as grief came on its heels. She let out an anguished groan, bending over with her hands on the soft layer of neatly buzzed hair on her head and her elbows on her knees. 

Finally the door began to chirp a third time, but halfway through the sound, it just slid open. Some part of her was aware that this was not supposed to happen, but it floundered amid the broken dam of her memories. She heard familiar, heavy footsteps enter the room and walk towards her, stopping immediately in front of her as the door slid shut again. 

“Imperator Ares,” came the modulated voice. She knew it was him, but that only caused all of her feelings to begin to escalate. She sucked in a slow, shuddering breath and did not move or look up at him. The moment that he paused and waited for her to respond felt like an eternity.

“Are you alright?” he asked finally. This was unusually kind of him, she realized. The storm within her was probably palpable, because she was able to employ precisely no effort at all to cloak it from him. She heard him take a knee, and reach out to gently touch one of her hands. The instant she felt the contact, she hissed and withdrew her arms, finally looking up at him. 

“Who are you, Kylo Ren?” she asked, and felt the tears beginning to soak into the fabric of her mask as they escaped her eyes and tried to roll down her cheek and nose. His gloved hand froze for a moment, surprised at first by her tears and then by her question. Then he lowered his arm slowly. For a moment, he was uncertain of what to say. Then, without uttering a word, he bent his head and slowly removed his helmet and set it on the floor. 

When that face arose before her again, it was as though the eye of the hurricane she was feeling suddenly broke over her. This time, he had removed the mask willingly, let himself be seen. The dark thunderhead of his anger changed, the shape the Force took around him began to break apart and reveal someone whose anger was, at its center, fueled entirely by pain. That pain was so particular, so familiar, that she stifled a sob. 

“Why do I know you?” she whispered, cloudy eyes fixated on him. Memories swirled and eddied around her, not quite linking up with one another, maddening in that as soon as she thought she had one, it would slip away. He was looking at her, a furrow in his brow.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.  ** _Who the hell is _ ** **she** ** _? _ ** The voice’s question was also a demand, and he debated asking. Her breath hitched as she heard his voice without the modulator, another wave of emotion rising up in her throat like bile, deepening her confusion even more. She reached out with a long, slender hand towards his face without thinking. As her fingers touched his cheek, he felt all the nerves on the back of his neck and down his spine begin to sparkle. They ran over his brow, across his nose, over his lips. For the first time she actually seemed blind, as though she was trying to see with her fingertips. 

“What about you?” he asked, when he could finally break through the overwhelming sensation of her gentle touch. He hadn’t felt that in more years than he cared to remember, and his heart was pounding in his ears at how familiar it felt. “Who are you, Kane Ares?” She blinked, and the question seemed to sink in.  _ What is hidden is powerful.  _ But she brought her other hand up to her face, and tugged the mask down.

He felt like lightning struck him, when he saw that familiar button nose, wide cupid’s bow, sweet pointed chin and wide cheekbones. Even with her eyes blinded and foggy, even without the mess of hair, he knew her. 

“ _ Io? _ ” he breathed, and when he said that name, something snapped. The walls of the eye of the storm collapsed, and all the memories swam together to build a timeline, however incomplete, that she thought she’d forgotten. Standing on the temple on Yavin 4 in the sun. Their first sparring match with sabers. Their first kiss inside the little ship on Jakku, when they’d been on the run for months after the Jedi Academy was attacked. The first time he entered her, while the river of light that was Coruscant flew by the window. His face when he’d seen what her past was like, full of concern and understanding. Han Solo, hand on her shoulder, saying  _ You stay with my son. He needs you. _

“ _ Ben? _ ” she mouthed, almost inaudibly, her lips working as though she was trying to say more but all words failed her. Her fingers on his face started to shake violently, and she fumbled down off of the sofa to kneel before him on her knees. Now it was Kylo’s turn to reach out to touch her face and be sure it was real. He even tugged off his leather gloves, taking her face in both of his huge hands as she looked up at him. Looking into the clouds of her eyes, he could almost see them as they once were, amber and glowing like the sun in a dust storm. He did not even think before he pressed his lips to her mouth. It set fire to her and soothed her at the same time, loosening the knots of her tense shoulders and tightening the muscles around her pelvic floor. Their lips remembered an ecstatic, hungry dance that their minds could not clearly recall, their bodies seemed to sync just as they always had. Before the First Order, before Snoke, before army and navy rank, before darkness subsumed their hearts. 

“They said you were dead,” he told her when he tore his mouth apart from hers, tears welling in his eyes. He pressed his forehead into hers, overwhelmed. She wanted him to take her then and there. She longed to feel the feelings that she barely recalled, all of which flowed from his hands, his eyes, his mouth.

“I almost was,” she replied. “Ben, I don’t remember--” But as soon as she said that name properly, he pulled away from her, dropping his hands. 

It was like the light had gone out of the room.

“Don’t call me that,” he said darkly. “My name is Kylo Ren.” She looked at him, feeling as though he had wounded her by removing his touch, filling up a void she had no idea existed and then vacating it as she hung there in the dark.

“I’m sorry, Kylo.” But that name left a strange taste in her mouth. Kylo Ren was vicious, volatile, ruthless. He was a volcano of rage, his hands only took life, they did not give it. Ben Solo, the face she remembered, was tender and reverent even when he was pushing her cheek into the wall, taking her from behind, growling into her ear. He would not harm her, but Kylo Ren would. The gale of emotions she had been trying to weather for some time now began to die in that moment, leaving her behind like a husk.

“We should get ready to fight,” he said as he stood up, “Imperator Ares.” The use of her title was pointed. Eyes looking off into nothingness, no longer wishing to see him, she followed suit. Her movements felt slow and surreal.

“Yes.” Her eyes cut daggers at him, her desolation bubbling up into anger. “You can leave, now.” His face seemed almost upset, as though her dismissal wounded him as much as his withdrawal hurt her.  ** _If Ben Solo is dead, is Iola Tosche dead as well?_ ** Her change was not like his. He had chosen to kill his past, but if she could not remember, it was possible that hers had simply been taken from her.  ** _Would she want hers back? Do you want _ ** **yours** ** _ back? Whatever is left of it? Whatever you haven’t ruined already? _ **

Putting his gloves and helmet back on, he swept out of her suite without another word.

In his lair, upon his throne, Snoke’s mangled face curled into a malevolent smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oookay finally they figured it out! and yes, now there will definitely be More Smut. probably also a lot of confusion, emotional volatility, and questionable ethics. just so you know.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is some proper smut in this chapter, with some extremely dubious consent. but, Kylo gets dommed hard, so there's that!

The first time Kylo saw Rey, he had been too late to dodge a blaster shot that wasn’t there. The baffling experience made him even more agitated than he’d been before, after the tumult of being berated once again by his master, then the intense conflict of his assault on the Resistance fleet. Leia Organa had been with them, but he didn’t know why he’d expected anything less. She was never frightened of being in the thick of things. When he’d returned to the bridge of the _ Supremacy _, the shattered remains of his helmet had been removed from the floor of the lift, along with all the shards of broken glass. 

“Commander,” greeted Hux as he crossed the command deck. His tone was perpetually irritated once more.

“What’s our status?” he asked brusquely. The redhead barely concealed the snarl his mouth took on before he replied.

“The Resistance fleet is managing to keep just ahead of us, so at this range our weapons are futile against their shields. However, they will run out of fuel eventually.”

“So we wait?” Ren summarized, annoyed. 

“Yes,” confirmed Hux crisply. When the Knight Commander turned to exit the bridge with a low growl, he saw Kane Ares standing there. She still had her mask on, and she stood with her hands behind her back, looking at him. Of course, she had been in a TIE fighter during the assault, so her uniform was a little unkempt. ** _You should ask her about the girl. _ **He didn’t want to, he didn’t even want to look at her. She reminded him of everything he hated about himself.

“Imperator, will you walk with me?” he asked anyway, baring his teeth a little. She lifted a brow.

“Certainly, Commander.” Her use of his title was barbed. He huffed past her, not slowing his pace to be sure she was beside him. When they were clear of the bridge, he took to the emptier corridors. 

“I saw the girl, a few moments ago,” he began. “As though she was standing here on the ship.”

“Oh?” This time, her raised brow was more curious than condescending. “Do you think she was projecting to you?”

“Are you going to keep wearing that mask?” he asked, for the first time distracted by being unable to see her face. He hadn’t meant to ask, but it sort of spilled out. Something about being bereft of his own mask made him feel uncomfortable with hers still being on. She narrowed her eyes at him, silent for a moment. Then, she sighed, and rolled her eyes as she tugged the mask down. Almost instantly, he regretted asking, as his guts tied themselves in knots.

“I wondered that at first, but I think not. Even though she is powerful, she doesn’t yet have the discipline to project over that much distance. I wanted to ask you if there was some other way it could have happened.” He could see her pondering, eyes no longer seeming to look at him as she brought her hand up to rub one knuckle over her lower lip. ** _Just like she always did. _ **

“Perhaps, though I am not certain how. There is nothing I am trained in that I know for certain would allow you both to see one another through the Force unintentionally. Even the bond it creates with family doesn’t quite work that way.” A beat of silence. Suddenly, he realized he’d been staring at her mouth, and forgotten to look away. Now she was giving him an icy look. He flushed, frowning.

“I see,” he murmured.

“Will that be all, Commander?” she asked him, her tone turning spiteful. Instantly, he was brimming with suppressed rage.

“No!” he snarled. “Another thing: are you going to keep acting this way? You called me childish before, but you’re the one being childish now.” ** _There you go, boy. Stand up for yourself!_ **

“I don’t know, _ Kylo _,” she spat his name out at him, “are you going to keep going hot and cold on me? Am I a memory you want to discard? Am I just dead weight, like everything else that happened?” 

“Of course you’re not!” He was getting louder, and closer. “It’s not that fucking _ simple _ anymore.” 

“You think I don’t know that? I just had all these memories come back to me! And they’re not even a fraction of everything that happened. Everything I thought I knew was a lie.” This time, she was moving closer, too. All the heat that she had felt before when she goaded him into choking her on the command shuttle was now rising up, curling towards him like a stinger. 

“I thought you were dead, along with almost everything else about my past!” he retorted, feeling himself grow hot as well. “And now you’re not just alive, but you’re just like me. A monster.” Before he could say another word, he was slammed back into the wall of the empty corridor. She glared at him, pressing the Force against him with strength he had only ever encountered from the Supreme Leader himself. 

“You do not have _ the faintest _ notion of what a monster I can be,” she hissed, her voice dropping in volume but once again seeming to whisper into his ear. He had expected a lash of pain to his head, as that was a favored tactic of hers. Instead, he felt something else. An invisible hand seemed to run up his leg, from the top of his boot all the way up beneath the hem of his tunic to--

“Fuck,” he breathed, stars in his eyes as he felt the hand take hold of his stiff cock. ** _You really cannot lose your temper with this girl without getting a hard on, can you? _ **She was still feet away in the center of the hall, glaring at him. He breathed hard, looking down at his crotch half expecting to see that he was naked from the waist down. But, his clothes were still intact. He looked back up at her. “What are you doing?”

“Whatever I want,” she replied, a faint cruel grin on her beautiful face. The hand that was there but not there began to stroke him from base to tip, pressure on all sides of his impressive girth. He groaned, eyes closing for a moment. Another invisible hand was running down his chest and through the crease where his torso met his thigh, and began to cradle his sack and massage it firmly. He shuddered, furious but overwhelmed with pleasure at the same time. “And I know what _ you _ want, Ren. I’ve always known, haven’t I?” His eyes flew wide open as the sensation of a tongue circling the puckered opening of his ass came over him, and her smirk blossomed as he gasped, writhing against the wall in a futile attempt to resist. “Maybe today I’ll give you what you want,” she mused, and began to walk towards him. Her hand extended to wrap around his chin, digging nails into his jawline. He wanted to snarl, to bite at her like a caged animal, but the invisible tongue plunged inside him and he stifled a yelp of pleasure. ** _Holy shit, it’s been a long time since you felt anything this good. Almost makes it worth the humiliation. Even if nobody sees, she still won this time._ ** He glared through his eyebrows at her, grimacing as waves of immaculate electricity surged through him, feeling the pace of the hand on his cock start to frenzy. He couldn’t even fathom resisting at that moment, even though he hated her for pinning him down, forcing his submission. 

“You want release, don’t you?” she murmured into his ear, and it was venom and silk. He whimpered. “How precious, that the famous Kylo Ren crumples when I don’t even touch him, desperate to cum, furious to be so conquered.” Her talk only amplified his agony, so close to the edge and so fully enraged to be there in the first place. 

“Fuck you,” he growled softly.

“Try,” she encouraged him sardonically. It was this challenge, this invitation wrapped in a taunt, that tipped him over the precipice. He felt himself begin to lose control, and he moaned uncontrollably. “Yes, cum for me… _ Ben _,” she hissed, and his eyes flew wide open in a horrible twist of his gut, all the hands stopping at once. Hearing that name in his ear at that moment made him feel sick. He let out a little, anguished howl, cum wetting his trousers as his ruined orgasm collapsed around him. She was glaring at him, cold even in her smugness, and she released his face from her grip and turned to walk away from him without a word. The pressure that held him to the wall vanished, and he stumbled as his knees buckled, one hand on the wall while he drew ragged breaths. 

“YOU’LL PAY FOR THAT!” he bellowed, but the corridor was empty.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we are still in Force-touching dubcon territory, just fair warning. this time it's Kane's turn, of course.

Down in the officer’s mess, there was an informal lunch gathering happening while the hours whiled away as they dogged the remainder of the Resistance fleet. It was strange, to get so bored while technically still being in battle. By that time nobody was still on edge, but neither had anyone truly relaxed.

General Hux was pouring glasses of Alderaanian wine, and something about the flourish of it being a reserve from a planet that was dead at the hands of the old Empire was exactly in character for him. Sadistic, even when he was already almost assured a victory.

“Just one each, obviously, we don’t all want to be potted until _after_ all is said and done,” he prattled, thin smile on his face as he handed a glass to Captain Phasma. Out of her own helmet, she was a beautiful, severe-looking woman with short blonde hair and icy blue eyes, with a strong jaw and discerning brow.

“Don’t you worry it’s pre-emptive, sir?” she asked wryly. “Or that you might curse the outcome?” 

“If anything, this wine represents the great triumphs of the old Empire, and so blesses it, Captain,” Hux replied, smug as ever. Phasma shrugged and took a sip before she returned to the food on her plate, which was beyond drab by comparison.

“How quintessential of you, General,” commented a gravelly voice, and Kane Ares approached the table. Her presence was its own sort of disruption, as even Kylo Ren, infamously bad-tempered as he was, was at least familiar to them. Ares hailed from the other end of the First Order’s conquest, and still darker rumors about her circled in the ranks from time to time. Hux looked up at her, and his face betrayed his mild shock at seeing her without her mask. 

“Imperator,” he greeted her, and held the glass of wine he had just been pouring out to her. “Will you join us?” She looked between the man and the glass for a moment.

“Certainly,” she replied with the ghost of a smile on her face. The set of her brow and the strange look of her gray eyes, combined with the fact that everyone got the distinct impression that she could see them anyway, kept that expression vaguely ominous. She accepted the glass and took a seat at one of the empty chairs at the round, shiny black table.

“Will the Commander be joining us, then?” Phasma asked her, as though she should know. Ares raised a brow.

“It’s not my week to watch him, Captain,” she replied, her near-smile turning disdainful. Hux stifled a laugh. Even Phasma’s perpetually serious expression gave way to a smirk. The other officers hid their smiles more effectively than their superiors. 

“How do you find the Navy these days, Imperator?” the redhead asked her. “Does it keep as shipshape as it did when you captained in the Core?”  _ Ah yes, _ she thought.  _ This is the one who wanted so much to join our campaign. He is interested in pointing his very big guns at a lot of people all at once. _

“But of course. It has only grown more impressive since then, even with the tragic loss of the base,” she replied. The subject of Starkiller Base was still a sore one for many present, she knew, but she wanted to keep everyone there on their back heels, so she mentioned it anyway. 

“And the  _ Paramount _ ?” asked a lieutenant, a short black-haired woman. “How does she fly?”

“A true beauty, that ship,” Ares said. “Very efficient. I would love to see her in battle.”

“Of course, and test out her sonic cannon!” commented another officer with a mustache. Before the Imperator could reply, she felt the strangest sensation. It was like fingertips running down the back of her neck, down her spine. She bristled, and as soon as she gave it a thought, she knew.

“Ah, so the Commander joins us after all,” said Hux, his voice less than enthusiastic. Kylo Ren was approaching the table. “Won’t you have a glass of this vintage from Alderaan, Ren?”

“I’d prefer not to be inebriated while those ships still fly,” he answered. “But I appreciate the offer.” Hux’s brow furrowed. The Commander never spoke to him in any manner that could be construed as polite, so this was quite unusual. 

“Have it your way, then,” the General said, almost uneasy. Ren nodded to Phasma, and then his eyes found Kane. The moment they did, she felt a pressure over the nub of her clit, which her body began to respond to immediately. She glowered at him.  _ Somebody’s been practicing, hm?  _ The circles were slow, excruciatingly so, and despite the fact that she knew it wouldn’t help, she crossed one leg over the other and squeezed her thighs together. He did not respond to her mental jab, only sat down with his plate at the round table. She took slow, even breaths as her nerves began to sparkle.  ** _Which is worse, do you think, being restrained or having to restrain yourself? _ ** The voice laughed in his ear, and he resisted the urge to smirk.

“The Imperator was just telling us about the  _ Paramount _ ,” the mustachioed officer interjected somewhat nervously. “Supposed to be a lovely ship.”

“Indeed,” Ren replied curtly, his eyes glancing only between his food and Ares. The pressure on her clit increased, and another invisible hand was running its fingers over her slit, which was growing wetter by the moment. She shifted almost imperceptibly in her chair, and took a swallow of the wine. _Oh, fuck._

“This is a lovely wine, General Hux,” she said. This brightened the redhead’s expression.

“It is truly an elegant vintage! You know, the grapes from that continent on Alderaan where said to be some of the best in the galaxy, they had to be grown just so…” But as he carried on, Ares was busy dealing with the reverberations through her body caused by the insertion of two of the invisible fingers into her cunt. The pressure on her clit seemed to shift from the firm sort, more like fingers, to a softer, wetter sort. As though a mouth had closed around the nub, and was suckling it. She felt her breath getting faster and harder, and shuddered ever so slightly. Every fiber of her being was soon going to be preoccupied with not visibly quaking under Ren’s Force ministrations. She glared at him, and he only looked self-satisfied in response.  ** _Two can play at this game. _ **

“Careful, Hux, you’ll bore our guest to death talking about grapes,” Phasma laughed. Ares realized she had completely missed the last several sentences of Hux’s monologue. She shook her head slightly, trying to pull herself back together, and turned towards him. 

“My apologies, General,” she offered, taking another sip. “There is much on my mind.” Across from her, Ren’s mouth twitched into a smirk and then fell dour again. 

“It’s quite alright,” Hux said, and he seemed a little pouty but willing to let it go. “I’m pleased you’re enjoying the vintage either way, Imperator.” She smiled a tense little smile at him, trying not to grimace as the invisible hand added another finger. Her entire torso clenched as they curled inwards, pressing hard on her g-spot. She swallowed hard, and her eyes flicked over to Ren, sharp as knives. 

“Not all of us are as well-versed in the area of fine wines as you, sir,” said the lieutenant with black hair. There were four fingers inside her now, and Ares let out a tiny groan as she took a bite of her lunch.

“Surely the food you had in the Core was no better,” Phasma joked with her, assuming the sound came from distaste for the food. “Or perhaps it was, since they’ve all the resources in the galaxy there.” The Imperator gave half a smile, but her skin was beginning to flush and the muscles of her inner thighs to tremble uncontrollably. _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck-_

“Quite the same, I only got my hopes up,” she murmured through her mounting pleasure, and anger. Ren was not even hiding his smirk now. The officer with the mustache laughed.

“You’d think they’d do alright on the bloody crown jewel of the fleet,” he chortled. “But nah. All the same grayish stuff. Seems a pity.” 

Hux was saying something in reply, but Ares was now glaring at Ren. Pain was erupting in the Commander’s head, but it wouldn’t sustain. _**She doesn't seem very focused on fighting back, **_the voices chortled.

“A toast,” he said suddenly, lifting his water glass. His eyes never left her. The officers fell silent, looking at him. Hux narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “To the Imperator, for her contributions to our efforts.” Ren's look was so smug that she wanted to slap him. There was a moment of befuddled silence, and in that moment, a single invisible finger slipped into her ass. Her spine went pin-straight as she swallowed a tiny yelp. Hux lifted an eyebrow, glancing at her. 

“To the Imperator,” the redhead chimed in, lifting his wine glass. There was a gentle chorus of _the Imperator_ from the officers around, all lifting their glasses, many looking at her and nodding, even smiling. She was so close to orgasm that she wanted to explode, and it took every ounce of effort in her not to start whimpering and sobbing. She did her best gracious nod, closing her eyes and raising her glass. Glasses clinked, and everyone took a drink except Kylo Ren, who was watching her relentlessly. His eyes, normally so anxious or broody, were full of sadistic glee. But she could take it no longer, and stood up rather violently from her seat.

“Thank you, Knight Commander,” she growled at him. “I must return to my duties.” And she turned and walked away, her gait unusually stiff as she tried in vain to resist the overwhelming sensations she felt as the Force manipulated her body. Ren showed his teeth in a predatory grin as she departed. **_You told her she would pay, after all._**

As soon as she rounded the door into the lavatory that was adjacent to the officer's mess, Ares clamped one hand over her mouth in an effort to stifle herself as she braced to cum violently. But just as she reached the edge, the sensations stopped, denying her release. For a moment, she was silent, staring in mortification at the wall.  _ Nononono oh you son of a BITCH!  _ The chuckle of his voice echoed through her mind.  _ You coward, you fucking cake of Bantha shit! _

Ren was watching the other officers titter in confusion at her abrupt exit, barely smiling to himself, silent. Then without a word, he rose with his untouched food and departed the table. As he did so, the officers looked after him.

“Perhaps he has a new rival, sir,” Phasma suggested to Hux, brow lifted.

“Perhaps,” echoed the General, frowning.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more smut...this time with romance? and.... aftercare, kinda?? featuring dom Kylo.

Sleep was not coming easily to most of the commanding officers as they crawled after the Resistance fleet, as most were waiting to hear their communicators call them back to their stations. That was not the only thing that was keeping Kane awake, of course. 

A deep dissatisfaction plagued her after Kylo’s show of dominance, one that ran deeper than her anger at having been retaliated against. Of course, she had been expecting it, but not that he would be so bold in his approach. Or that she would secretly enjoy it so much, though she pushed back against that feeling because his denial at the end was the part that she did not enjoy. 

She knocked at the door of his chambers, clad in her regulation underclothes and a pair of black training pants. Since abandoning her mask, she had stopped worrying about hiding most of herself. Her sabers were strapped to her thighs openly as well. When the door slid open, he was shirtless and in his own black training pants. The visuals of her memory seemed augmented by the shape he took now, his body only grown more powerful. She swallowed as her blind eyes perceived the broad musculature of his shoulders, his large arms, pectorals, the cut lines of his lower abdominals that led her eye down below the waistband of his pants… 

“Why are you here?” he asked her, crossing his arms much as she had done the first time he had knocked on her door on board the _Paramount_. Though he sounded irritated, she had expected him to reject her presence instantly. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, realizing at that moment that she didn’t know the real answer. He furrowed his brow at her.

“That’s it?” he asked, incredulous.

“Neither can you,” she pointed out. He looked at her for a moment, expression opaque. She waited for the door to shut in her face. But, he canted his head backward, signaling her to enter. She stepped over the threshold, the door sliding shut behind her, and followed him into the common room of his suite. He turned around to face her again, letting his arms fall back to his sides.

“I saw her again,” Kylo said, unprompted.

“The girl?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“The same as last time?”

“Yeah. I asked her why we were connected, but she doesn’t know either.” His mouth worked as though there was something else he wanted to say, but wasn’t sure how.

“Skywalker... might have done it,” Kane’s voice faltered over the name of their old master. She had not spoken it aloud for many years, and now she finally recalled fragments of her life under his tutelage. 

“Maybe,” he agreed, but his thoughts were elsewhere, now.  ** _Are you going to admit how much you wish you could teach the girl? Ever since the forest, how much you want to make her yours, so someone might finally admire you the way Io used to? How much you hate that she hates you?_ ** He ignored the voice, though his teeth ground in frustration, sending a pang of horrible grief through him when it uttered her old name. With it came the longing he had so diligently suppressed into anger and self-loathing.

“Have you thought of using it to lure her here?” Kane asked, but his expression had turned sad. The air in the room shifted, all the hostility melting away as it seemed to always do once they were alone.

“I’ve struggled to think about anything but you, since that day in the training hall,” he admitted, stepping towards her, looking down at her. “Maybe even before.” She felt her heartbeat quicken.

“I…” she started, unsure what to say. His eyes met hers, pools of darkness that longed to see her clearly. “I know the feeling,” she admitted after a moment. 

“I can’t be who I once was, Kane,” he said earnestly. He was so close now, inches away. Somewhere in her head, she knew she was supposed to be angry with him. But that part of her that was so empty, so full of longing, so completely ignored, was louder.

“Neither of us can,” she replied. Her cloudy eyes searched his face, everything about his presence in the Force calling to her memories. To the best parts of each of them, even as they both learned and made mistakes. He had always struggled so openly, she always so imperceptibly. What made him miserable now was his rawness, how angry and pained he felt now that he didn’t even have the mask of his emulation of Darth Vader to hide behind. But for her, the mask had always been there. It was part of her, developed from childhood, always present even when her real mask was not.

“You make me wish I could,” he admitted, voice barely audible. She reached up a hand to touch the scar on his face, running her fingers down it slowly. It continued, she realized, down his neck and over his collar bone, down onto his chest. He closed his eyes for a moment, lost in her touch. 

“We… we should let go of it, Kylo. The past. Let it die, or it will haunt us forever.” His eyes opened again, her statement sinking into his bones.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he whispered, his heart breaking.

“You lost someone else. I’m not who I was, either. That doesn’t mean we can’t still have each other.” She looked at him, almost smiling. He touched her face, fingers on her soft cheek. Then, with the most gentleness she had ever felt from him, he leaned down to press his lips against hers. It sent lightning through her in slow-motion, heart pounding in her ears like it was the first time. His lips were soft, tugging hers open, until their open mouths hovered against one another, lips barely touching. The hand on her cheek slid fingertips back to hold her jaw, lifting her head up so he could reach her more easily as he moved closer, pressing their bodies together.

Slowly, slowly, he ran his tongue around the perimeter of her open lips. The sensation of it was exhilarating, making her want to collapse into him. She did not suppress the soft little moan it elicited, and when his mouth crushed against hers more fully she suckled on his tongue. She felt him start to get hard, pressed up against her, and heat rushed to the apex of her thighs. Their tongues snaked around one another, his other hand cupping the other side of her face. 

“Kylo,” she whispered, and he had never heard her speak his name so hungrily. His skin flushed with arousal, and he spontaneously decided to scoop her up into his arms and carry her into his bedroom. She gave a soft little giggle, and began kissing his neck as he walked, feeling the vibrations of his groan through his throat. He put her down gingerly on the bed, and sat down on the edge of it. Before he could say anything else, she swung one leg around him and climbed playfully into his lap, straddling him, pushing herself against his swollen cock. He groaned again, his hands snaking around her back, splaying across the flesh beneath her shoulder blades.

“Why is it that every time we fight, we can’t help but want to fuck?” she mused.

“It was always like that,” he murmured in response against her neck as he nuzzled her there. “And then you weaponized it.” 

“Hurting you didn’t come to mind, I guess. Normally, that’s what I would do to someone who pissed me off that much.” She grinned a little, sighing as he nipped her collarbone. 

“Yeah, instead you just humiliated me,” Kylo responded, an edge creeping into his tone as he pulled his head back far enough to look at her face. 

“There was nobody in the corridor,” she defended, narrowing her eyes at him slightly. “At least I didn’t try to make a public spectacle of you!” 

“Why did you like it so much, then?” he challenged her, pushing his crotch up against her, his grip on her back growing firmer. 

“I didn’t, not when you wouldn’t even let me cum after all that.” Her brow furrowed, the memory raising her hackles. 

“Better than ruining it with a reminder of everything you regret, isn’t it?” His voice was growing sharper, as anger started to rise within him. 

“You called me a monster!” she retorted, her own anger emerging. Without warning his grip on her back became powerful, pressing her against him as he turned them over onto the bed, pinning her down on her back beneath his impressive weight. She was tense against him, prepared to fight back, but something in her was unwilling.

“We are both monsters. That’s what you meant just now, isn’t it? When you said we can’t be what we once were?” He was growling now. She glared at him, but no retort came. He was right. “Now we have each other. If you want a monster, that is what you have.” He sat up, and she realized that her legs were pinned to the bed by invisible restraints, splayed wide open. Her hands were pulled powerfully up above her head, trapped there with the same power of the Force. One of his huge hands came around her neck beneath her jaw, making her lightheaded for a moment, her eyelids fluttering. She was shaking, but not with the desire to escape.

_ Will you break me at last, Kylo Ren?  _ The words came through the static of voices in his head from her, and he snarled, pushing one of his fingers inside her open mouth as she tried to breathe. 

“You want me to break you?” he hissed, plunging the finger down against her tongue to the back of her throat until she gagged, barely loosening his grip on her throat long enough for her to get half a breath as he pulled it out only to replace it with two. His hard cock was still pressed against her, and he could feel dampness seeping through her training pants.  ** _Unbelievable. She loves this. _ ** As she gagged again, staring into his eyes the entire time, he pulled his hands away from her to sit back on his haunches and slapped the mound of her cunt with his hand. Even through the fabric it hurt, but the swollen nub of her clit felt it, too. Her torso contracted against the pain and she sucked in a breath, but made no sound. Experimentally, he slapped it again, and again, and several times in rapid succession. She writhed against her invisible restraints, baring her teeth as she tried not to yelp. 

“Go ahead, Imperator,” he growled. “Scream. Howl. Nobody will hear you, in here.” She stopped moving to glare at him, so he issued another series of slaps, this one much longer, and finally she cried out in the mixture of pain and pleasure.

“I can’t break you with pain alone, can I?” he asked her, plunging his fingers back into her mouth, rubbing her tongue mercilessly, to emphasize that his question was rhetorical. Muffled moans reverberated around his digits as he flicked her nub harshly through the fabric. “No, even the Supreme Leader knew that. You are not starved for pain. Neither of us is.” Kane’s eyes watered from gagging, her hips bucking as he returned to slapping her. Suddenly her eyes began to roll back, her whole body to spasm as her orgasm burst from her, her pants going from damp to soaked. 

“I almost forgot you’re a squirter,” Kylo snickered, and he kept slapping her even as she started to gurgle and buck wildly, strangled by the fingers in her throat. “What if I broke you this way? Made you cum until you begged me to stop?” She squeezed her eyes shut, her body stiffening as a second orgasm rushed through her on the other’s heels. The wet spot on her trousers spread. 

Deciding he’d had enough of her clothes, he began to remove the straps on her legs that held her sabers. 

“Hey!” growled Kane, even as she was pinned there, gasping.

“Don’t worry, I’m just getting them out of the way,” he assured her, and they both hit the floor. Then he unceremoniously removed her training pants, pulling the regulation black briefs off with them, moving her legs just long enough to do so. They joined her weapons on the floor, and he tugged her black tank top off as well. She laid there, legs spread wide before him, feet and hands both pinned above her head by the invisible restraints of the Force. He took in the sight of her cunt below its tuft of black hair, already so swollen and red, skin slick with her cum. His own arousal pressed against his clothes.

“What a sight,” he gloated, running his nails hard down the backs of her thighs from knee to ass. “To see you, the most feared soldier in this army, on display for me.” He slapped the red lines that appeared under his hands, and she gasped.

“If you keep this up, I’m going to think you’re all talk,” she chided him, and he felt his face get hot. 

“You’re the one who’s talking too much,” he said, and he climbed over her, knees on either side of her head, and slipped down the waistband of his training pants. His cock sprang out immediately, throbbing and huge. He took her by the chin and pushed her mouth open, leaning down to spit into it with obscene relish. Her clit throbbed, the awful intimacy of that domination sending waves of anticipation through her body. “Put your mouth to better use,” he growled, and he could have sworn she actually opened her mouth wider to receive his majestic girth. One hand on the fuzzy top of her head, he began to thrust into her mouth, gently at first. But her gag reflex was long since suppressed, and soon he was fucking her face vigorously. He reached behind with his other hand to cup her sex, slick as it was already, and slipped two fingers inside of her as he palmed her sensitive clit. Her ragged moans were muted by his cock, the vibrations of her vocal chords sending shivers through his nerves.

“Already so overstimulated, aren’t you?” Every time his palm pressed on her clit, her whole body jerked. His hand started to move faster, fingers curled up into her, his mouth agape as he watched her eyes roll again.  ** _Look at her, cumming with those lips wrapped around you. Really a sight. _ **

Kane felt her body seize again, this time from a deeper place, the place that caused every muscle to contract and then push the orgasm out of her violently. The sound of his hand became a pleasant, wet squelch as her cum drenched it, and as usual he didn’t let her get away with just the one. Kylo added a third finger just as she thought she’d finished, keeping the same merciless pace, and within a minute she was cumming again. 

“Fuck,” he hissed, and his pelvis began to jerk erratically. As her body flailed under his hand, she felt him cum into her throat. He managed not to lose much of his composure at all, holding his cock deep as she gagged, until he was done. Then, he moved off of her, and pulled his hand away from her cunt to dribble her own cum over her face. 

“This is just the start, Ares,” he told her, and he scooped up her tank top from the floor and unceremoniously shoved it into her mouth. She tried to bite his fingers as he did so, and he laughed. “I expected no less, of course. Now, what if we really made this interesting?”

Before she knew it, he had plucked one of her sabers from the floor and discarded its belt. It was not as long as the usual hilt of a light saber, and it was curved gently. There were few irregularities in its shape, only a grip on one side that had wide, gentle ridges. It had a little finger loop on one end, ostensibly for being able to twirl it rapidly. It was a beautifully made weapon, actually, the more he looked at it. 

_ You fucker, _ came her voice into his mind, the words landing like pangs of a cluster headache. He returned to the bed, looking truly vicious.

“You’ve seen nothing yet,” he promised her in a hoarse whisper into her ear, tweaking one nipple painfully. He began rubbing the hilt of the saber across her wet mound, and she started to shake. Kane felt her heartbeat skyrocket, and little beads of sweat began to form on her brow. These were telltale signs that she was frightened, though she could not really feel fear the way most people could. But at the same time, she was completely exhilarated. Kylo put three fingers inside her again and she moaned around the fabric stuffed in her mouth, then louder as he added a fourth. They moved in and out of her slowly, working her open to receive the blunt metal object in his other hand. Then it came, the pang of cold as he pressed one end of the saber to her raw folds, though it was almost a relief for a moment.

Then it was moving deeper inside her, and she cried out around her gag. The pressure of it was profound, so unforgiving and hard was the material. She felt a tear leak from her eye and fall down the side of her face, but she would not ask him to stop. And she nearly didn’t want to, either.

As he started to pump the thing in and out of her, he watched as her stomach moved up and down rapidly, her body working to breathe regularly. The cries and yelps were a constant stream, now, and they only increased in volume when he spat on her clit and started to rub his fingers gently over it. He barely needed to touch her. The feeling of it seared through her body from head to toe, and she began to sob as another orgasm mounted.

“That’s right, cum again,” he growled, eyes never leaving her face as she weathered yet another one, and then another after that. He slipped one wet finger into her ass, and her eyes rolled yet again. “Oh, you  _ really _ like that, don’t you? You are truly an unfathomable slut,” he cooed, adding another finger, still pumping the metal saber into her abused cunt. 

“Look at me,” he ordered her, and she felt the Force jerk her head upward, her gray eyes flying wide open. “I want to watch the light leave your eyes when you cum for me again.” This sent a whole new wave of hot, desperate arousal through her body, and as the orgasm crashed over her he stared back at her as if staring into her soul. The wet spot on his bed was massive. He wanted so badly to put his mouth on her cunt, to feel her and taste her, and to push his already revived cock into her. But something else in him was not ready, some part that was frightened that it meant too much, was too close. Instead, he pulled the saber out of her and moved up so he could put one hand on her damp cheek. Sidling up beside her he moved his face close to hers. 

“You need to hold still, now. Entirely still. Because despite it all, I do not want to maim you. Do you understand, Kane?” he asked, tone very serious, looking into her bleary eyes. The Imperator was not sure if she still had the power of speech, only looking at him through fluttering eyelashes, slowly nodding. She was in no place to argue, now she was only holding onto her determination not to give in and beg him to stop. Her body was wracked, exhausted, yet still she felt that hunger for more. “Good.”

He wrapped his arm around her head, his hand now holding her by her other cheek and her chin which tilted her face up to look at him. Then, he turned the saber in his other hand on. Her eyes flew open and her head started to jerk, muffled cries coming from her mouth. 

“Shh,” he soothed her, almost gently. “Trust me. I will not harm you, but you must keep very, very still.” Staring at him, she stopped struggling. The hum of the weapon filled the air, and suddenly she felt the vibrating handle of it touch her stomach, just below her belly button. She glanced down and saw that he was holding it with the blade pointed at the ceiling, the other end of the hilt touching her flesh. It moved slowly down towards her clit. 

When it made contact with the raw bundle of nerves, she screamed. It took every ounce of control in her body not to buck wildly, to kick and flail to get it off of her. The intensity of the buzzing was going to put her over the edge, she knew it. But after Kylo held it there firmly for a moment, the scarlet lash of her nerves took on a new dimension of pleasure. The orgasm that hit her came so suddenly that even she was shocked, and a stream of warm cum issued from her cunt, and  _ goddamn him but he isn’t going to move that thing.  _

The buzzing remained, and he watched her intently and held her head with gentle but profound strength, which she hated to admit did actually help her feel less like she had to flail to survive. His heat, his pressure, the attention he paid to her as she laid there and screamed through yet another orgasm was oddly grounding, even as she could do nothing but bear the intensity. Her head swam and stars came before her eyes. When she felt pressure from an unknown source begin to push against the opening of her cunt, she howled. An invisible cock was inside her, pushing against her g-spot even while the vibrating hilt was like a saw on her clit. She came again in minutes, her screams beginning to become ragged. There was another moment of pressure, and when yet another invisible cock pushed into her ass she knew that it was only a matter of time before she would break. 

Pain and pleasure began to pool together, as though she could not tell the difference between the two anymore, and then the intervals between her orgasms became less and less distinguishable, as though they were all one big orgasm that simply came in waves. She began to actually weep, tears streaming down her face.

_ Please _ , the words came.  _ Please, please stop. I can’t.  _

“You want me to stop?” he asked her, looking down at her intensely, and she nodded. “One more. Just one more, and then I’ll stop.” 

_ I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t _

“You can. I’m right here. Just one more. You can do it,” he coaxed her, and she felt the pressure in her cunt increase, as though the invisible cock was growing inside her, pressing against her g-spot with terrifying strength. He wiggled the saber hilt just a little, casting the vibrations in a new rhythm across her clit. She howled at him. “You’re almost there!”

When she came, it was like her body turned into fireworks. Her muscles were all shaking violently even as she held them perfectly still, and the sound she made was almost more animal than human. 

“There you go, there you go,” Kylo cooed, and he made her ride out the entire thing until he felt her begin to deflate. Then, he turned the saber off, and the pressure inside of her vanished. He pulled the tank top from her mouth, tossing it away. She felt the restraints on her limbs dissipate also, but she couldn’t move them.

“Do you want me to pull your legs down?” He was speaking so sweetly that she felt her entire body melt, years of tension just falling away. She nodded as best she could, in her delirium, and he gingerly pulled her legs back down into their more usual lying position. He also tugged her arms back down from above her head. Holding her limp body like it could break at any moment, he settled her up against him in his arms, one hand stroking her cheek softly. He looked into her cloudy eyes, watching her as she drifted through her overwhelm. 

For a long time they laid there, and slowly Kane returned to the present. She felt his hand as it stroked her cheek, her shoulder, her back ever so gently, sending tingles running all over her, soothing her. She also felt her hips begin to ache from being so opened for so long, and her heart was beating in her clit. Finally her eyelids fluttered, and that sense that she could see despite her blindness returned to Kylo. He smiled at her.

“There you are,” he said, his hand which had been stroking her back coming back up to run over her temple. “You seem awfully peaceful.” 

_ Oh really?  _ She was smiling, but still too spent to try to speak aloud.  _ I never felt so relaxed _ . He laughed a soft little laugh, and she felt her heart swell.

“You really did want to be broken, huh?” At this, she felt the desire to bristle. But then she sighed, glancing away from him. 

_ Perhaps. _ She felt a nudge on her cheek from his hand, and looked back at him. His face was serious, his eyes searching hers. He moved in close to kiss her, and it was delicate and sincere. She didn’t want to talk anymore, but evidently neither did he, because they laid there in silence until they both drifted off, Kane enveloped in Kylo’s arms. Just as he stood on the threshold of sleep, Kylo realized that the voices in his head had all fallen silent like they always used to when she was there. 


	13. Chapter 13

When Kylo awoke, he realized groggily that Kane was no longer curled up beside him. He heard the drum of the shower in his refresher, though, and rolled out of bed after one powerful stretch that reached from his fingertips to his toes. When he entered the little room, the steam filled his nose.

“Any updates on the status of the Resistance?” he asked the blurred figure of the Imperator behind the glass door. 

“Apparently they’re still running, but they’ve begun to lose some of their smaller ships,” she replied in her even, professional tone. 

“Mm. Mind if I join you?” At this, the shower door slid open and Kane peeked around the edge of it with a little smirk on her face. One grey eye looked him up and down, and he realized that ever since she had seen him without his mask, he felt that she observed him even more closely. As though she didn’t only see him with the Force, now, but some memory of him had merged with her Force-sight and now he stood clear as day before her. When her eye landed on his erect cock, swollen from sleep, this felt even more apparent. She crooked a finger, beckoning him to her. 

A smirk to match hers appeared on his face as he stepped into the shower and slid the door shut behind him. Under the hot water, her whole body was blushing and pert. He pressed up against her, cock pushed up against his stomach and hers as he bent his head down to capture her lips in a gentle, hungry kiss. He turned around, pulling her with him, till the hot water fell on his back and spread a blissful warmth over him. One of her hands was already running fingertips over his enormous chest, down his stomach, nearing his groin. He growled into her mouth.

“I want you all the time. It’s maddening,” Kane murmured as she pulled away from the kiss to give little bite marks to the underside of his chin, down his neck, over his adam’s apple. She touched him right where he wanted her to, then, and he felt his torso tighten. 

“I know. I’d take you on the bridge right in front of all the officers. Let you ride my cock while I flew a TIE fighter and blew the Resistance ships full of holes,” he snarled in return, his huge hands grasping the underside of both her ass cheeks and kneading the tender flesh between them near the mound of her sex. Her hand stroked his powerful length slowly, menacingly.

“What about on the ground after a fight? After slaughtering our opposition, recapturing their cities, taking their tithe in blood?” She was trying to downplay the little gasps that his fingers were eliciting, rather unsuccessfully. “Would you fuck me on the corpses of our enemies?” 

The sheer darkness of this suggestion flooded him with lust, and if there was a part of him that was surprised at his own desires, it was lost in the surge.

“I would fuck you _ anywhere _.” His fingers were slipping inside her, the slit of her cunt wet with more than just the shower water as they flicked over the nub of her clit. She hissed, her grip tightening on his cock as she bit down on his collar bone. Pushing her back against the wall of the shower and nudging her legs further apart, Kylo took one hand and held her by the throat while the other sank three fingers deep inside her without warning. Curling his grip, he began to fuck her with his hand, slow at first and deep with his palm rubbing up against her clit. Her grip on his cock didn’t falter, and she matched the rhythm of his hand with her own. He stared into her clouded eyes as their pace quickened, panting and moaning into the steamy air. 

“F-fuck--” Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she tried to exclaim through the grip of his hand on her neck. He felt her muscle walls tighten on his fingers and heard the wet slapping sound of her cumming into his hand, and even through this her grip on him was hard and relentless. Watching her orgasm always brought on his own, and his hips jerked as he came. He kissed her while still choking her, growling as she bit his lower lip, their tongues snaking around each other. Finally he loosened his grip on her, and she nudged him back into the direct flow of the water, smiling against his mouth. 

“Good thing we’re already here,” she murmured. “You need to clean up your mess.” 

“Mm,” was his only reply, and he ran his hands over her stomach and thighs as the water fell on them. Minimal soap and rinsing later, Kane pulled away from him. 

“I have to check my comm,” she disclaimed as she slid the shower door open and stepped out. She tugged a towel off the wall and took to drying herself hastily. Kylo finished washing himself and exited on her heels, following her as she left the refresher and began to pull her clothes off the floor and slip into them. 

“Anything new?” he asked her as she strapped her light sabers to her thighs. 

“No. I’m wanted in the training hall, but it’s not related to the pursuit.” Kylo was stepping into his pants and tying them, but he was also watching her the entire time. “I’m gonna head back to my quarters and change.” 

“Wait,” he said as she turned towards the door of his chambers. She turned to look at him, expression expectant. He felt himself hesitate, but pushed through it anyway. 

“I love you,” he said, and it sounded somehow both quick and halting, secret and anxious. Her expression was unreadable for a moment, but then it fell to clear confusion and dismay. 

“I… I can’t…” 

Kylo’s heart sank past his knees. 

“Is this not a good time?” he asked, his cheeks burning.

“...No. Not really. I don’t have time to explain.” Kane was clearly disoriented, but showed no apparent disgust. At the same time, he almost felt the wall of professionalism fall down over her entire presence. A familiar and gut-wrenching sensation of being locked out, held at arm's length. “I have to go, Ren.” 

And before he had given half a nod, she turned and exited his suite. He was left in a resounding silence, heart thudding in his ears. 

** _You are such an idiot, Ren. What possessed you?_ **

“Please, shut up,” he told the voice. His tone wavered. He wanted to weep, and to scream, and maybe to break something. The usual array of desires when it hurt this much, but the wound was not the usual old scar opening. It felt fresh, and raw. 

** _Even if she felt the same way, do you really think she would say it? Just because you two used to be lovers? _ **

“Stop,” he growled at the voice, starting to get angry.

** _Just because she let you fuck her--_ **

“I SAID SHUT UP!” he howled, fists pounding into the nearest wall. He leaned his head onto that wall, regretting the decision to have it reinforced with a harder steel. Not that the crumpling of the metal would actually have been more satisfying, but something about seeing the damage he could inflict on things was a pale shade of proof that he still had some power left.

Leaning there for a moment, the voices fell to whispering around him. He drew a breath very slowly, and then let it out slowly. 

** _Listen. She’s not someone you can control, Ren. You have to share power with her. That’s obvious by now, isn’t it? She will always fight you for control, and any time you think you have it, she is letting you think so. You don’t trust her, do you? Do you think she trusts you? Don’t let her become your weakness. She is your past, still. Do you love her as she is right now? Or do you love the thing she once was for you? _ **

For once, the voice dropped its sneering. The questions it asked were not ones he knew how to answer. He pushed himself back up, staring into the wall. 

“She said we have to let the past die.” 

** _What if it doesn’t want to stay dead? What if you have to kill it?_ **

His jaw worked, full of frustration and confusion. He turned, and began to walk towards his wardrobe to procure the rest of his clothes. Then, he felt that strange tug of the Force that he had begun to recognize. A high, soft voice so unlike Kane’s came to him. 

“I’d rather not do this now.” 

It was behind him. His whole body tensed, but he let out a slow breath.

“Yeah, me too.”


	14. Chapter 14

It was another late night in the training hall for Kane Ares, sleepless as she was while they stayed in pursuit of the Resistance. They were getting closer, she could tell. The Force was taut with so many threads, she felt sure that a great convergence was looming though she couldn’t have said what. She had gone out of her way to choose one of the smaller training halls on the Supremacy, though she had reason to believe that her reputation would cause any errant night owls to steer clear of the room she occupied. Fewer of the night staff were about, as everyone was tense awaiting the end of the Resistance fleet’s fuel reserves. 

She drilled all the phases of staff combat mercilessly, the patterns of it engrained in her very bones, by now. She was beginning to recall just the littlest shards of her past, but they were so incredibly fragmented that they amounted to no true realizations. Only glimpses of ghosts. 

No matter what she did, she could not stop replaying the moment in her head.  _ I love you.  _ She spun and deflected a target droid’s blaster shot.  _ I love you.  _ She leapt into the air and deflected two more.  _ I love you.  _ She ran up the wall several steps and flipped back down onto the ground, disabling three practice droids with precise blows from her electrostaff, which wasn’t even activated.  _ I love you.  _

Finally, with a growl of errant frustration, she spun and managed to plunge the electrostaff through the eyelens of one of the droids. It sputtered and then shut down, squawking pitifully. Her chest heaving, she threw the staff and its freshly kabobed droid onto the floor of the training hall.

_ Who even says that? What does love even mean in this horrible place? How could it possibly mean what it used to mean, when we were young? Before we came here?  _ Pressing her palms into her eyelids, Kane groaned at nothing. 

She felt his presence before the door opened. She had known this would happen, and dreaded it, but could fathom no reason to prevent it. 

“You alright?” came that deep voice she knew so well. Kylo Ren was there in his blacks, equipped to drill. His hair was a mess, his feet bare, saber at his side. 

“I am fine,” she replied unconvincingly, dropping her hands and looking up though not at him directly.

“Sure you are,” he replied dryly. “That’s why you’re here spearing droids.”

“You have absolutely  _ no _ room to speak on the subject of causing damage to inanimate objects as a result of your feelings, Ren,” she snapped, grey eyes flying to him. For a moment, he felt the cold terror she seemed to elicit when her stinger was raised like that. But it faded quickly, as did her poise to strike. “I’m… sorry. That wasn’t necessary.” 

“It’s alright,” he reassured her. She slunk to the bench along the wall of the training hall, sitting down with her elbows on her knees, letting her weariness show. It seemed useless to try to keep her inscrutable armor intact around him, as he already knew so much about her that lived beneath it. Kylo walked over to her, sitting on the same bench but not too close. “I’ve… seen the girl again. Twice,” he told her quietly.  _ Why is this always his lead-in, when what we should be talking about is whatever the hell is happening between us?  _

“That so?” she asked, not looking at him, but not hostile either. 

“We touched, the last time.” This caused her to look up at him, brow knit.

“Touched? Through the Force?”

“Yes. Just our fingertips,” he added, rather hastily. She scowled at him.

“I’m not concerned with how you touched, Ren. I only know that it’s very difficult to be able to touch someone else as a Force-projection. Though…” she trailed off, glancing away from him as if in some painful recollection. “Another Force user might be able to do it, if they were powerful enough. Touch a projection, I mean.” 

“I still don’t think she’s the one doing it. But I also know it’s likely not Skywalker, as he seemed very distressed that it happened at all.” 

“He was there?”

“He is with the girl, yes. I knew that before, but I felt it this time. I haven’t felt his presence for years. But it was clear as day, at that moment.” 

“Hm,” was her only reply, a finger stroking her lower lip thoughtfully.

“Rey is looking for her parents, or to find out who they are. Even the island of the first Jedi Temple, where I believe they are, cannot show her.” Kylo was solemn. 

“Have you seen who they are?”

“No.”

“And this is her entire goal? To find her parents?” Kane seemed incredulous, even disappointed.

“It’s been her goal since she left Jakku, though not the only one. She is being trained by Skywalker, that’s certain. I told her she needed a teacher, so she found one.” 

“You offered to teach her, did you not?” the Imperator asked, and there was a drop of venom in her voice. 

“Of course I did,” Kylo replied. “What else would I do? Snoke wanted her at all costs.” Kane sat upright and turned her head to face him. 

“You wanted her too, didn’t you? To train her, to make her yours? Who wouldn’t want a young thing like her to admire them, study them, respect them? Revere them?” Kylo frowned, brow furrowed, shaken by her perceptiveness. 

“She’s just a girl, yes. She has incredible raw power, comparable only to yours and mine. She’s feisty, though, and angry. But she’s innocent, Kane. Naive.”

“How intoxicating, to be around that much childlike enthusiasm,” replied the Imperator, gray eyes drifting off into elsewhere, musing. “I almost don’t blame you for wanting to take that. To be its master.” Her eyes cut back to him, and she slid closer to him on the bench. 

“I…” He didn’t know what to say. She was right, his desire to bring Rey back to Snoke had fully collapsed into a desire to make her his own pupil instead. Rey was everything that he had felt was taken from him, all that power and  _ faith _ . 

“She wants to bring you back to the light, doesn’t she?” Kane was now beginning to see into Kylo’s mind, in that casual way that she often could once they were close enough, if she paid enough attention. Right now, she was focused solely on him. She let her face hover close to his, her words breathy and near his ear as he looked at his knees. 

“Yes, she thinks she can,” he confirmed, but his voice was soft and distant. She put a hand on his thigh, and he looked down at it. 

“Do you want her to? Those sweet little eyes, staring up at you. So full of genuine conviction that you’ll turn back for her. She thinks you’re the last hope of the Resistance, I bet. The fallen one, the prodigal son who can return home. I’m almost jealous, that you have someone who looks at you that way.” Her hand was gently rubbing his thigh.

“She won’t turn me back,” he pointed out, looking sidelong at Kane. He was beginning to turn towards her on the bench. “She can’t.” 

“Her innocence won’t, I know that much about you. You’d rather she turned for you. Am I wrong?” 

“No.”

“You’d much rather corrupt her, wouldn’t you? But only if she took her place  _ beneath _ you,” she murmured in his ear. “Can’t have someone else fighting you for dominance, can we?” 

“Wait--” But even as Kylo felt the edge in that remark, he realized that he was firmly attached to the bench, sitting with his legs wide open and either hand planted on the seat beside him. Kane stood up from the bench, her hand leaving his thigh and instead gripping his chin in a familiar clench as she pulled his face up to look at hers. 

“You want to master her as much as you want to master me. You don’t trust me, and I suppose you have no reason to. Our master kept us apart, despite our histories, for a reason. But this girl  _ Rey _ ,” she said the name like it tasted bad, “you think she would be much easier to subjugate. More likely to worship you, perhaps. More likely to defer, to unconditionally support, to reinforce your sense of power that you so desperately cling to.” Kylo felt his face begin to burn, anger bristling in him, but the sensation of being trapped by her never ceased to turn him on.  ** _She got one over on you this time, and you love it, don’t you? What the fuck is wrong with you, anyway? _ **

“When we touched, I saw her turn to the darkness,” he growled. “The Force showed me that what I want will come true.” 

“That’s not how it works, Ren. The Force showed you one possible future. There are many more.” She bent close to him. “Did it show her crumbling beneath you? Beneath those big hands, that ample cock of yours?” 

Her other hand reached down to where his arousal was pressing against his trousers, and it responded immediately to her touch. He glared through his eyebrows at her. She leaned one knee into his groin, pressing it against him firmly. Pain shot through him, mixing with the pleasure that had already begun to mount into a coil in his gut, and he hissed.

“Or did you imagine she would be the one in control? Did you let her pin you down, all that spark pushing against you and riding you and teasing you? Can you even imagine her using the Force as I do, to make you helpless and arouse you so fully?” She leaned into his cock with her knee once again, and he yelped. “Or is her control just a facade? Do you let her have it, or does she take it from you?” She put her hand beneath his jaw, squeezing the arteries on either side of his neck for a moment, and even though he could breathe he saw stars. Then she released him, and pulled her knee back from his crotch. 

“No,” he murmured.

“Excuse me?” Kane asked, her voice like a blade, and she pulled his head up by the chin again.

“No, she can’t take control.” He felt a strange amount of shame boiling within him, but her hand was stroking along his cock beneath his trousers now, so the feeling arose alongside his arousal. Perhaps it always did.

“That’s right. You just let her believe she has it. You think that would be enough for you, Ren? To just let her have the illusion, to covet your own control all the time and hoard it, always waiting for the moment when you have to reestablish your dominance?” It was humiliating, how clearly she saw him. But she leaned close to his face, her lips brushing his. “Or would you rather give up? Just let it all go, stop trying to win, finally _trust_ another person?” 

He looked into her eyes, and he could tell that in this moment she was admitting something about herself, too. His breath came hard and heavy, and she stared back at him with all the tension and weariness of carrying her perpetual armor evident in the clouds of her eyes. Then, something else arose there.

Without warning, she released him. Not just his face, but the Force’s grip on his body, and her hand from his stiff cock, all at once. Stepping back away from him as he steadied himself on the bench, she glowered at him. 

“You can’t have both, Ren. You have to figure it out. But unless she does join us, she is a threat. If you join her, you are a threat, too.” The wall had fallen again, harder this time than ever, and he felt like his innards were being ripped out. 

“You can’t just take whatever you want from me!” he spat at her. “I know _you_ want to be broken, Ares. I know that’s the only way you know how to give up. But if I thought something on the other side of trust was worth having, maybe I would give up, too. As long as there’s nothing there, I see no problem with trying to turn her.”

“Fuck you,” the Imperator spat, and her fury was evident as the air in the room seemed to grow cold. “You have no idea what it’s like to trust nobody, ever. You’re so full of feelings because you got your trust broken so much, because someone gave a damn about you more than once even if they did a bad job of it.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what Rey said. She asked me why I killed Han Solo, if he loved me,” Kylo retorted. “Maybe she still has the capacity for love, maybe that’s why I want her to join me.” The jab hit home, and Kane crossed her arms and stood up to her full height. The stinger was poised once more.

“You know nothing about love, Kylo Ren. Maybe you loved me, but that was a past that you already tried to kill once. You murdered your father trying to murder yourself, to become something more powerful. But you’re still just a wounded child, trying desperately to protect your heart. You’re no different from me, that way. Except apparently you can still be fooled by  _ love _ .”

She turned and exited the training hall, leaving Kylo wide-eyed in the wake of her harsh words. His heart pounded in his chest, his hands began to shake.

** _She thinks you’re weak, that you want to return to the light because you think you’ll be loved there. Maybe she’s right. _ **

With a howl, he punched the bench beneath him. The metal crumpled this time, but it didn’t make him feel better at all. He launched himself at the droid and staff that were still on the floor of the training hall, beating into them with all his strength. Pieces of the droid flew everywhere, and only a pile of dented parts was left before he hauled himself up from the floor and marched away.


	15. Chapter 15

Snoke was languishing on his throne when Kane answered the summons, entering the massive chamber clad in her uniform bodysuit and jacket with her light sabers on either thigh. She had abandoned her mask, no longer preoccupied with hiding her face. Her manner was almost too smooth, too evened out, frighteningly calm. 

“Master,” she greeted him, bowing her head low. 

“My girl,” he cooed. “Rise, and come closer.” 

Obediently, she approached his throne. 

“The girl-child Rey is coming to us,” Snoke whispered to her, full of delighted conspiracy. “Have you sensed it?” 

“Yes, Master.” Her face was like stone.

“Of course you have.” One long finger extended from his hand to stroke her cheek. “Have you sensed the conflict in my other young apprentice as well?” 

“Yes, Master, I have.”

“He desires to bring her to the darkness,” Snoke said, his voice more than a little condescending. “But, it is too late, I fear. Skywalker will be training her to become a Jedi, and though she is young, and the darkness calls to her, I fear it will take more time than we have to lure her to us, body and soul.” 

“How may I be of assistance, Master?” asked Kane, and there was a fierceness in her voice that caused a terrible grin to curl across Snoke’s mangled face. 

“So keen, my girl has always been. And so cruel.” He dragged a nail over the skin of her face where his finger had been, and it did not quite bite the skin. “Young Kylo Ren is on the edge of a knife. He does not know how easily his desires could be used to seduce him back towards the light. How he desires this girl, and how that makes him vulnerable. But you do.”

Ares only looked at him, her eyes full of her anger, the only ripple on her icy surface. 

“I intend to have him murder her. But in case he fails, I need you to be present also. To assure her death, in the event that he is too weak to carry it out.” Snoke’s smile was still there, casual and venomous. For a moment, his pupil was silent.

“It would be my pleasure to serve you, Master,” Kane finally replied.

“I sense your hatred of this child, my girl. Now is perhaps your time to wield your fury in ways you rarely do,” he suggested.

“I will endeavor to please my Master, as always.” She took a knee before him, bowing. He tugged her back up with a claw on her chin.

“Go,” he said dismissively. “Be ready.” 

With a new sense of purpose, Kane walked out of the throne room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh..... now shit is getting real..... 
> 
> thank you for all the kudos and readership, y'all :) i know this is a shorter chapter, but i thought it might be interesting!


	16. Chapter 16

When the elevator door opened into the wide, imposing chamber that was Supreme Leader Snoke’s throne room, Imperator Ares was standing there as if to greet Commander Ren and his long awaited guest. Kane knew that when the girl arrived, she had been almost surprised that she was taken into restraints immediately. A clear indication that Rey was under the impression that she and Kylo were _ really _ bonding, which Kane thought was funny. But her exterior energy remained that uncanny calm that was a dead giveaway by now, at least to Ren, that she was full of cold, poisonous fury.

Ren’s head was full of demons. ** _She’ll turn, you think? Are you sure? Of course you want her too. Look at her. All that power, all that energy, all packed into that tight little ass. _ **He managed to let the lecherous voice growl into his ear without reacting, even though it was starting to piss him off. 

Rey’s expression when she saw the Imperator was priceless. She looked like a startled rabbit who had just spied an apex predator, but with nowhere to turn and run to. That was how instantly she felt that terrible fear that Kane wielded so artfully. She continued to walk onwards towards the even more horrible figure of Snoke at Kylo’s nudging, though. Kane turned to walk at the rear of their procession, which only made Rey more nervous. It was like being caught between lions, with one questionable ally. Kane could feel the girl trying to push her conviction to the forefront of her mind, to put away the doubts she was now facing about whatever it was she had walked into, and a faint smirk crossed the officer’s face.

“Well done, my good and faithful apprentice. My faith in you is restored. Young Rey. Welcome!” Snoke said, with all his usual flourish. “Come closer, child.” 

The scene played out almost laughably predictably, at first. Snoke would be full of patronizing schadenfreude, giddy with his victory. The girl would spit her little sparks of resistance only to be shown that she was in fact the mouse, being toyed with by the cat.

And then, everything changed.

“It was I who bridged your minds. I stoked Ren’s conflicted soul, you so full of charming naivete and so faithful that you could save him, just as his past came back to haunt him. So many memories. How his old flames burned within him, since I took his childhood love and stripped her of her past, her memories, her voice, even her sight!” He cackled cruelly, and Kane went utterly rigid. 

She had taken a place off to the left of Kylo to watch the reckoning unfold, but had not expected that it would be a reckoning of her own at all. If she had been a fool, her mind would have been racing with thoughts of shock and horror. A deluge of them began to clot in her subconscious, but with all the strength she could muster she dammed them up and instead let only the white fire of hate spill out. 

Kylo looked at her, wide-eyed with shock of his own, but her demeanor was so inscrutable that even he couldn’t detect if she’d been lying to him or not. Voices around him screamed incoherently, full of fury and hatred for himself, for Snoke, possibly even for Kane.

** _THIS WHOLE TIME? THIS WHOLE ENTIRE GODDAMN TIME???_ **

“And then for you to be so sure he would return to you, that you could seize that conflict and help him. Foolish child. I knew he was not strong enough to hide it from you, and you were not wise enough to resist the bait. And now, you will give me Skywalker. Then I will kill you with the cruelest stroke!” Snoke was foaming at the mouth, gleeful, while his apprentices stood behind masks of anger. 

As his extraction of the information he sought from the girl ensued, Kane felt her heart calcify beneath the weight of this betrayal. She did not look at Ren, and she knew that in keeping her thoughts from Snoke, he would also be unable to see them. She hated it, because the only thing she wanted right now was for him to know that she was his ally, and that she hated Snoke at least as much as he did. But it was a risk she had to take, this time. She knew what she wanted to do, though, without having to think about it. In that moment, the Force sang through her very veins, promising her that her goal was within her grasp if only she trusted its ineffable flow. 

“My worthy apprentice, son of darkness, heir apparent to Lord Vader,” began Snoke’s appeal to Kylo, as Rey was bound on her knees before him on the floor. “Where there was conflict, I now sense resolve. Where there was weakness, strength. Complete your training, and fulfill your destiny.”

“I know what I have to do,” the young man said, and in that moment, Kane saw the bridge between Rey and Kylo very clearly. They were now of a like mind, she realized, but the bridge was obfuscating whose thoughts were whose. She could not interrupt it, she realized, not without revealing herself to her master. But Kane’s gut told her that she knew Kylo well enough to know what he was going to do. For a split second, she felt the deep fear of trusting him-- of trusting _ herself _ to know him that well. But the Force was humming all around and within her, like an arrow pointing to her object.

“Ben,” the girl whimpered, terrified and pleading.

“You think you can turn him? Pathetic child. I cannot be betrayed, I cannot be beaten!” Snoke snarled. “I see his mind, I see his every intent. Yes! I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true!”

Kane’s clouded eyes did not reveal that she knew the light saber on the armrest near the Supreme Leader had begun to turn, just as Kylo’s was turning in his hand. 

“And now, foolish child, he ignites it, and kills his true enemy!” 

As soon as the beam of blue light clove the object of the entire galaxy’s fear and hatred in twain, Kane’s figure vanished from the throne room. 

~~~~~

In her quarters on the Supremacy, the Imperator’s gray eyes flew wide open. She was sitting on the floor cross-legged, hands in her lap, sweat running down her face. The Force projection of herself had been exhausting to keep up, to make sure that even her master didn’t know she wasn’t physically there if she possibly could. She took one slow, deep inhale. 

When the gravity of what had just happened hit her with full force, she began to sob.

“Oh god, Ben. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she bawled as she crumpled over and curled up into a fetal position. Snoke was dead, and suddenly whatever it was that had been keeping her from her own memories had fallen away. For years she had not tried, unless she felt deeply hopeless, to remember anything. Her master’s power had been bent on keeping her out of her own mind, instead teaching her to pry into the thoughts of others to work his fell purposes. But now that he was no longer there, she was stumbling upon a memory at nearly every turn. 

She had not been conscious when they’d taken her sight, or broken her voice, so there was no memory of those pains. But the entire attack on the old base flooded back first, and then more and more filled in the gaps between the little scenes she barely recalled of her life as a pupil of Luke Skywalker, friend and lover of Ben Solo, and before that the child of her hopeless, distant, tragic parents on Duro. Why she was so cruel and relentless became clearer to her than it had ever been, and why she trusted nobody. She wept in a crumpled heap on the floor.

_ Yet, you trusted him. You trusted that Ren wanted exactly what you wanted in that throne room. You trusted your gut, to know that he would, when you could not use the Force to be certain. And you were right. _

The realization did nothing to ease her tears, in fact she let out a low, gravelly howl as those thoughts struck her in a wholly new way. It was the exquisite pain of realizing what you’d missed your entire life. That the fear you nurtured and tended ceaselessly for so many years was unnecessary, even just one time. The sting and then relief of it was indescribable. 

For an incredibly long time, Kane laid there and cried as if releasing every single tear she’d ever held back in a long life of stoic endurance. Her mind wandered the paths of her memories. She did not try to get up, did not turn on her communicator, did not even look through the vast web of the Force to see what happened to the girl. She knew that she could not sever the bond Snoke had created. She knew that this moment was a pivotal one, that the tug between light and dark was at its strongest. She knew that soon enough, no matter what the outcome, Kylo Ren would come looking for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, we're nearing the end of TLJ... there will be at least a couple more chapters of this, but the next part will likely rise from the events of Rise of Skywalker!


	17. Chapter 17

The entire starboard wing of the massive flagship was adrift in space, though by now the breach had been contained and what remained of the fleet had been deployed immediately to begin evacuation and recovery. Repairs were a longshot, but stabilizing the mess and putting out fires and taking stock of the damage were all well underway. 

Just when he thought he’d burned off every single drop of acetone rage he had left in his body, Kylo arrived back on what was left of the  _ Supremacy _ to find that Kane Ares had not been seen or spoken to for hours by any of the crew. In the rush to follow on the heels of the Resistance and confront Luke Skywalker, her absence had not been addressed. Now he marched down the corridors like a storm, making directly for her quarters. 

** _Do you really think she’s still here, Ren? She’s a powerful woman. She could be anywhere by now._ ** But he shook his head at the voice whispering doubts into his ear. Either she would be there, or some trace of her might remain.  ** _Perhaps a goodbye note,_ ** the voice mocked him. He snarled as he made to slam his fist into the tiny control unit, but the door slid open quietly of its own accord. He stilled, and the voices hushed, as he realized that meant she was still there. 

The antechamber he entered was utterly dark when the door slid shut, and the bedroom beyond it was barely lit by the stars and the wrecked remains of the First Order Navy outside of the massive window. But it was as though the Force guided his eyes to the dim, crumpled figure on the floor in front of the bed.

“Kane!” he said, struck with a sudden and somewhat inexplicable terror that she was dead. He pressed the control pad on the wall as he ran towards her, turning on the soft little bedside lamp. She was curled up in a fetal position with her arms splayed in a strange way, as though she were unconscious. He knelt beside her, feeling his heart pounding in his ears. “Kane,” he murmured again, tugging off his gloves to reach over and touch the side of her face. The flesh was clammy, but she was not dead. He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and knelt beside her.

Then, he heard a soft, faint little voice. Scratchy, difficult to make out, and her face was slumped down pointing more towards the floor than upwards towards him. He thought it sounded like  _ Ben _ but wasn’t sure. Her eyelids began to flutter.

“Kane, it’s me,” he told her, his lip beginning to crumple as he held back the urge to cry. It was as though his memories of who she once was- who they had both once been- were coming back twice as vivid as ever. He bent his face closer to hers, and stroked the fuzz on her head softly. Clouded gray eyes emerged from between rows of dark lashes, and they seemed to find him in that uncanny way they always had of seeing through blindness. 

“Kylo,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.” As she turned her face towards him, he saw that her skin was still ruddy with the dried paths of tears, the skin around her eyes was pink and raw. 

“Did you know the whole time?” he asked, unable to hold the question back.

“No.” 

The relief he felt was like draining all the soreness and pain and hot anger from his body. He let out another breath, slowly. 

“So he betrayed both of us.” Her only reply was a faint nod. Kylo’s shoulders sagged, and the tears began to run silently down his face as he looked at the floor, flat with grief.

“What happened?” she asked softly after giving him a moment. He swallowed hard and did not raise his eyes to meet hers.

“I asked Rey to join me,” he told her.

“Did she agree?” Kane asked. At first, he wanted to snarl at her to ask the Force like she did for everything else, and leave him be. But the wind was out of his sails, and he figured that if she had been projecting into the throne room the entire time, she was probably even more exhausted than he was. 

“No.” He couldn’t keep the pain of that rejection out of his voice, nor could he yet look at her and face whatever her reaction was to his news. There was a beat of silence, and then he was surprised to feel her hand reach out to rest on his knee gently. “She rejoined the rest of them, though there are almost none left now. They’re gone. On the  _ Falcon _ .”

“Luke Skywalker is dead,” she said, casual as you please. Kylo looked at her then, brow furrowed.

“How do you know that?” 

“I felt it. His presence in the Force is not gone, but his body is no more.”

“So the projection killed him,” Kylo mused. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Is that what I felt? Did he project all the way here from the old Jedi Temple?” Kane looked impressed. 

“Yes,” he growled in response, the fresh sting of his embarrassment rising quickly. Hux was going to bring that whole thing up again later, he knew. He looked down at her hand on his knee, releasing the anger for now. She didn’t know what had happened, and she would find out the whole story soon enough, he reasoned. He placed his hand over hers. 

“Why did you project into the throne room when Rey came, instead of just being there yourself?” he asked her quietly. 

“I… knew something was going to happen. It’s difficult to explain, but sometimes when the Force converges on a certain point in time and space, the possible array of outcomes of that event is so broad that it can’t be predicted. Or even really influenced,” she replied, choosing her words carefully and intentionally. “I didn’t trust Snoke, or the girl, or you. So I projected there, to be sure that I had a failsafe in case whatever happened was horribly wrong.” 

“What outcome would have been horribly wrong?” he prodded, but she narrowed her eyes at him. 

“A great many could have been, for me. I didn’t know because I couldn’t see them all. But when Snoke…” Here she paused, as though her voice was caught in her throat for a moment. “I wanted to kill him, so I had to guard my mind from him. From everyone. I couldn’t even look into the Force. And I couldn’t interrupt the bond between you and the girl, or I would have given you away by seeing your minds.” 

“How did you know we would kill him, if you couldn’t look into the Force?” Here all pretense, all ulterior motive vanished from his demeanor. The question was artless, and he looked at her with his big, sad eyes. She was silent for a moment, and he felt her hand on his knee begin to shake.

“I didn’t,” she confessed, her voice small as tears welled into her eyes. “I just… trusted you.” He was surprised, and his heart felt like it was breaking wide open. But not in a way that hurt, not like glass shattering in his chest. More like a long hidden reserve of something- he hesitated to call it love- had finally been let out. 

“You could have come to the throne room. We could have used you in that fight,” he murmured softly to her, almost laughing at the last part. There was no reprimand in his voice. His thumb stroked her hand sweetly.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I couldn’t. I… You had the right to choose. I had to offer you that choice.” Without saying anything more, Kylo knew that she had been hurt deeply by his choice to ask Rey to join him. He also knew that she had already elected not to hold it against him. 

“I had no idea what you were going to do,” he found himself trying to explain. “I didn’t know if you were in on Snoke’s whole plan from the beginning.” 

“It’s alright, Kylo. I had to keep my mind hidden. There was no way for you to know.” She wasn’t angry. It baffled him.

“I’m sorry for leaving you here for so long,” he offered meekly.

“That’s alright, too. I knew you would come eventually.” She gave him a little half-smile. “Regardless of your choice.” 

He was out of words, could find no way to respond to her. For a moment he was overwhelmed with whatever feeling this forgiveness on her part had elicited. It was something made of both love and humility, both respect and relief. Silently he moved his hands around her back and in the crook of her knees, scooping her up off the floor as he stood. A breathless little  _ oh _ escaped her lips as he did this, and as usual this display of his strength caused the network of nerves that led to her groin to crackle to life. She was not an especially small woman, after all. He looked at her, embers behind his dark eyes. 

“Would you believe me if I told you that you were always the person I wanted by my side?” he asked her, his voice low. She looked back at him, gray eyes seeing through to his soul, and nodded. He knew she was not lying. 

“You’re the Supreme Leader, now,” she reminded him, looping her arms around his neck. “Technically, I am at your command.” 

“No,” he said, calm and decisive. “The past is dead. I have killed it myself. You will rule beside me as my equal.” And with that, he marched out of her quarters and into the corridor, causing the officers that were moving about at their near-frantic pace to stop and stare. He moved resolutely, with uncharacteristic calm, all the way to the elevator and up to the empty remains of the throne room. Much of the detritus had already been cleared by droids and workers, and the bodies of Snoke and the Praetorian Guard were long since removed. Now it was like a ruin of its former glory that was still heavy with ominous power, with each giant window unscreened and showing the massive starfield and nearby planets behind the wreckage of the fleet.

He walked up to the huge, imposing throne where once their master had sat, the nexus of his cruelty and ambition. The entire way, Kane had looked only at him. Now, he turned his head to meet her gaze again as he shifted and sank down into the seat with her in his arms. 

“Shouldn’t we see to the ship?” she asked him playfully, smirking. 

“We have subordinates for that,” he replied, and his face was so serious and so self-assured that she found herself aroused. Now sitting on his lap, she ran one hand across the expanse of his chest and leaned her head towards him, lips hovering by his ear.

“Should we have some sort of ceremony, do you think? An inauguration?” she cooed, and felt his cock twitch beneath her thighs. The hand that had carried her beneath her knees slid up one leg in response, palming her cunt on its way up her torso between her breasts to the pull of the little zipper on her bodysuit. 

“Never thought you were one for fanfare,” he retorted, pulling the zipper down without subtlety or pretense. The air in the ship was chill enough to stand her nipples to attention immediately beneath the loose fit of her unbuttoned vest as the fitted bodysuit fabric sprang away from her powerful figure. It opened a few inches past her belly button, just barely revealing the band of her underwear. She breathed out a barely audible moan, lifting one leg up to place an unshod foot on the arm rest of the throne, making space for him to touch her. When the zipper gave out, he simply continued to run his hand directly to the familiar little nub of her clit beneath the clothing, running two fingers on either side of it slowly. She gasped, and her hand pulled at the zipper of his coat and ran beneath the fabric over his flushed skin. 

“We don’t have to invite anyone else,” she reassured him breathily, her eyes fluttering as he continued to tease her clit.

“You’re wet through two layers of clothes, Supreme Leader Ares,” he informed her, and indeed there was a damp spot forming just below where he touched her.

“And you’re hard through four, Supreme Leader Ren,” she retorted, and pushed the curve of her muscled ass down to grind against his cock. He growled softly.

“Take off your vest,” he ordered her, and she was happy to comply. The long sleeves of her bodysuit were peeled off next, leaving her bare from the waist up.

“Unbutton your trousers,” she countered, lifting herself up to plant a knee on either side of him. The seat of the throne was massive, a reminder of the terrible stature and presence of Snoke that both of his former apprentices were keen to defile. His hands pulled the zipper of his coat the rest of the way open, revealing the high band of his trousers which he undid with familiar swiftness. His cock, which seemed enormous despite her having seen it before, sprang up against the muscled wall of his abs. She sat back on her haunches to look at him, hungrily drinking in the sight of his opened clothes and the pale, powerful body beneath, slouched back casually in the seat of power with his truly regal cock twitching for her. His pupils, blown out with desire, raked across her form, her broad shoulders and pert little breasts and the devastatingly tempting arrow of exposed skin where the zipper of her suit ended. She reached out to take the pink head of his cock in her hand, pushing her thumb into the underside of it firmly, and he groaned. 

She couldn’t help but take it into her mouth, bending down to run her tongue lavishly from the base up to her hand. As she carried on, he let out guttural moans and watched her intently, transfixed. When he felt so worked up he could barely stand it anymore, he reached down with both hands to lift her face up to him.

“I want to take you right here,” he snarled.

“Please do,” she replied, straightening up so that he could peel the bodysuit down further. When her position proved unhelpful, he took her by the hips and pulled her up as she stood. With a foot on either side of him, he tugged her underthings off right along with the legs of the suit. The sight of her dripping cunt overwhelmed him, and he leaned forward to wrap his plush lips around her clit, eliciting a surprised gasp followed by a shuddering moan as he began to lave her with his tongue. Her hands tangled up in his hair as she stood on shaking legs and let him devour her, his mouth unhurried and indulgent. He worked a finger inside her, then two, then three, and her moans turned louder and accompanied by little strings of curses. 

“Fuck, Kylo, get me ready for that gorgeous cock,” she groaned. At this he looked up at her through his eyebrows, like a hunting wolf, and his tongue and fingers became intent. Crying out, Kane’s orgasm crashed over her before she knew it, and spilled out onto Kylo’s lips and ran down his chin and forearm and dribbled onto his chest. Moaning into her cunt, he did not stop any of his ministrations- why would he? When he knew he could make her do it again in minutes, if he just pushed her through the shattering of the first? 

Once her second orgasm had drenched him, he tugged her back down onto her knees and kissed her ferociously. The taste of her cum in his mouth just stoked her desire, and despite her shaking she reached down to grasp his cock firmly in her hand, stroking it slowly as she let her ripened cunt hover over it. 

For a fleeting moment, Kylo’s fear of how close this was bubbled up within him. The reason he had not taken her long before, the anxious aversion to vulnerability and intimacy, appeared in his mind like a specter. But this time, he also felt something else. Perhaps it was a memory, or maybe it was a new sense of trust, or both. He wasn’t entirely certain. All he knew was, at least right now, the shame he felt was gone.

Then his hand was on hers on his powerful shaft, guiding her, being guided by her. The wet folds of her entrance slipped over him, and then she began to sink down. Each moment of it felt excruciatingly good, the grip of her walls on his girth sending stars before his eyes. Her mouth hung open, whimpering as she slowly took him-  _ all _ of him. When he was sheathed entirely, and each could feel the heartbeat of the other pulsing through their sacrums and reverberating through their chests, he looked into her eyes. 

They were brown, like dark wells of memory. 

Before he could be shocked, though, the doorway to the throne room opened with a rattling huff of air. Glancing past her at the unwelcome shaft of light, Kylo glowered at two officers whose expressions went from blank to utterly shocked in the split second before the door slammed shut again, louder and faster than it was mechanically supposed to with the help of the Force. 

When he looked back at Kane, she was smirking at him. Her eyes remained clouded and gray. 

“At least you have a gorgeous ass,” he told her, and gave the muscle in question a hard slap to illustrate his point. A sound that was half laugh and half yelp of delight escaped her, and the movement of her torso in response cast a shudder of pleasure over them both. Leaning towards him to take either side of his face in her hands, Kane began to grind up against him slowly, moaning as she locked eyes with him. The pressure was profound, and her clit rubbed up against him as she moved. As her pace began to increase, he began to move to meet her, and before long she was clenching around him and her eyes were rolling back into her head as she howled. Her body went limp, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her to him as he kept fucking her. 

“Kylo _holy_ _hell_,” she mewled into his neck, and he shifted long enough to pull his coat the rest of the way off and stand up, hoisting her into the air without warning. Yelping with delight, Kylo stood and held her while he fucked her mercilessly.

“I will take you like this every single day,” he snarled. “Over the bodies of our enemies, in front of every cur that flinches when we enter the room, after we spar right on the floor of the training hall, I will fuck you senseless. Even if I have to beg you to let me do it, or make you beg me, I don’t care.” Kane was incoherent, these obscene remarks sending shudders of ecstasy through her, escalating the sound of her overwhelm. “I want to fuck you through to your soul, Kane Ares. We will make this galaxy our own, you and I.” He moved them once again, turning her to bend over the seat of the throne, ass in the air as he plunged his majestic cock back inside her.

“Oh yes, Kylo, fuck me!” she wailed, back arching as he obliged. “Fuck me so good I’ll tie you up to get you inside me if I have to, fuck me until I scream so loud every last creature in the galaxy knows your name, oh  _ don’t stop _ \--” and she came again, clamping down on him with such strength that he nearly lost control. But he knew what he wanted, and as she went limp once again with aftershock, he turned her over so that she gazed up at him with teary, enraptured eyes.

“I didn’t know I could fuck you till you wept,” he crooned, pushing her legs apart and back until they rested on the arms of the throne. Bending over her, he wiped a single tear from the corner of her eye with his thumb.

“It’s so good…” was her whimpered reply, and she took his face in her hands and gasped when he slid back inside her, as though uncertain if she could take any more.

“Look into my eyes,” he commanded, and she did without hesitation. His gaze could have bored holes in her, it was so intense, as he resumed his relentless pace with one hand thumbing her clit. 

When she screamed, he felt his entire body respond with its own orgasm. He kept watching her even as he groaned and panted, and spilled pearly cum all over her and the black metal of the high seat. His lover, his partner, his equal was withering beneath him, utterly undone, barely lucid. He caught his breath, and then gathered her up in his arms to hold her as he sat back in their throne. She curled up against him, breathing deep, shivering. One hand came up to stroke his cheek blindly, sweetly. For a while, there was only the distant sound of the ship repairs, the chaos they had abandoned for long enough to consummate their rule. 

“I love you,” came her voice, sudden and quiet. Surprised, he looked down at her face.

“I love you back,” he replied, smiling despite himself. For all his earlier prose about power and control, for all the ferocity with which he depicted their terrible reign together… he was still so soft and childlike at times, but this time she expected it. And she treasured it. She smiled back. 

“We should get dressed. We have a lot to do.” 


	18. Chapter 18

The command shuttle was flying through hyperspace en-route to Batuu, accompanied by a TIE Echelon assault shuttle. Inside the Echelon, twelve troopers of the 709th Legion prepared to carry out their orders to occupy Black Spire Outpost, the last place the Millennium Falcon was seen.

Inside the command shuttle, Kylo Ren was sitting half-clothed in the pilot’s seat, glowering at a projection of General Hux. 

“So they’ve been in two places at once?” he snarled. 

“They very well could have split up. My army can move onto Tah’Nuhna and find out, is all I’m suggesting,  _ Supreme Leader. _ ” Hux said the title like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Fine. Destroy everything that’s touched a bloody Resistance ship if you have to. And if the girl is there, I want to be informed immediately. I want her dead, Hux.”

“Understood,” nodded Hux, seeming pleased enough with his orders, and the faint blue image of the man disappeared.

“If we continue giving him orders like that, he’ll wipe out the entire galaxy and leave us with no one to rule,” came a low voice behind him. Kylo turned as Kane slid into the cockpit, fully nude.

“Now I see why you didn’t come answer the hail,” he replied, smirking at her. “Not in the mood to dress yet?”

“Oh no, not at all,” replied his counterpart as she approached the seat, slipping into his lap with one leg on either side of him. She reached up to run her fingers through the hair at the base of his head with slow scratches. “I’m disappointed that you’re clothed at all, too,” she added, shifting her weight against the tops of his thighs in their black trousers. 

“Forgive me for not thinking Hux deserves to see me naked,” Kylo retorted. “Plus, it’s not like you let him see you, just now.” Kane lifted a brow. 

“Fair play,” she ceded. Pushing her torso up against his, pressing her pert little breasts up against the smooth, still-damp flesh of his chest, she leaned in close to press her nose against his. “Come back to bed.”

“We can’t fuck all the time, I’m sorry to say.” His voice was rueful, even as his hands splayed across her back. “We do have to rule the galaxy, too.” He leaned a little closer, and made to kiss her.

“Four hours until we arrive leaves plenty of time to do it again.” She pulled her face back before his lips could land, and pouted.

“It leaves time for us to talk about our next move, too,” he pointed out. “We can do both.” Kane rolled her eyes.

“Fine. If our next move isn’t to send General Hux to fuck an entire planet for possibly playing host to the Resistance, what is it?” she inquired.

“That’s what I was going to ask you.” Kylo raised a brow. “You’re the Imperator. How goes our campaign in the core?” 

“Rather well, based on the report I received yesterday. Hux is livid that he’s not there, yet.” She was badly suppressing a giggle. “The New Republic is in tatters. Right now it is the neutral systems that need a little persuading.” 

“How do you plan to persuade them?” 

“Not by sending Hux to blow them up. He’s a bloodthirsty one. I think we’d be wise to keep him focused only on what we can afford to lose. Grand Admiral Sloane’s approach of diplomacy has worked wonders on the more affluent worlds, those with more to lose themselves, particularly since Starkiller Base.”

“That base is gone,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but the idea that the First Order would lay waste to  _ everything _ to get what we want isn’t.” She smiled an unnerving smile. “If Hux continues to prove this on more… difficult systems, then we have what we need.” He looked down at her, impressed.

“Did you learn your military strategy from growing up on Duro?” he asked her curiously.

“Sort of. I learned some things, none of them from my parents. But they sent me away from the military academy to become a Jedi, of course.” She frowned. “Not knowing that the Jedi were already on their deathbed.”

“The only Jedi left is the girl, and she was barely trained. But she is still alive.” Every time Rey came up, it was like taking a whetstone to the furious edge of his malice.

“She’s not negligible, you’re right. I won’t dismiss her. She’s much more powerful than she knows. I think it is her lack of knowledge that could be her undoing, though.” Kane trailed her fingers down the back of his neck, over his shoulder and collarbone, down his muscled arm.

“I’m hoping to blow her up before she causes any more trouble,” Kylo grumbled.

“Do you think that’s likely?” she asked.

“No.”

“Me neither.” Fingers trailed back up, up his neck, under his chin to his plush lips. “Until we find her, or find out what the Resistance is doing, we can’t plan much else. I’m not as strong as Snoke was with the Force, but don’t think I neglect looking for answers.” 

“You? Neglect your enemies?” He smirked at her. “Unlikely.” He let his lips hang open, and gently her forefinger ran across them, and then less gently it pushed between his teeth and traced a salty path down the center of his tongue. A soft, low moan escaped him.

“Nor do I neglect my lovers,” she cooed. His lips closed around her finger, and he suckled on it. She responded by drawing circles on his tongue, pushing it deeper in. Her blind eyes never seemed blind to him anymore, as he could tell that her stare was fixated on his lips as her own fell open, her breathing getting harder. He ran his hands down to her ass cheeks, grinding her against his groin where his cock was beginning to stir. The dampness between her legs was already beginning to leave a spot on his clothing. She pulled her finger out of his mouth, luxuriously slowly. 

“What happens when we have our first fight over command?” he asked huskily. “Do I bend you over the conference table and fuck you right there?”

“Perhaps I pin you to the chair and fuck  _ you _ ,” she countered, running a nail over his nipple briefly. He hissed, but his cock only hardened at the tiny zap of pleasure and pain. “Whoever acts fastest, I suppose.” 

“Mm,” was all he said in reply before he claimed her mouth with his own, and one of his big hands found its way between her legs from the back and began to stroke the slick folds there. She moaned into the kiss as he pushed a finger inside of her, then two, and pushed them against the spot on her inner walls that caused her pelvic floor constrict. She felt his cock, now hardened to its fullest, pressed against her clit, and ground her hips into it with rising desperation. 

When he pulled his fingers out of her precious cunt, he broke the kiss and pushed them into her mouth. She took them with gusto, eyelids fluttering and her grinding motions pausing, distracted. His other hand moved between them to open the fastenings of his trousers and let his desire free, pulsing up against her heated apex. Fingers still in her mouth, he shifted just enough to push the head of his length inside her. Her audible response was muffled around his digits as slowly he sheathed himself in her, and their bodies began to create a rhythm.

Without warning, he pulled his fingers out of her mouth and instead moved his hand back behind her and began to circle the puckered opening of her ass with them. 

“Fuck, Kylo,  _ yes _ ,” she swore, and he slipped them both inside, eliciting a delighted gasp. “Oh my  _ gods _ !” She was riding him now, breath getting quicker and quicker as she wound tighter and tighter with pleasure. He drove his fingers in and out in time, watching her raptly as her breath hitched, eyelids fluttered and rolled, moans falling silent as an orgasm wracked her body. As soon as she fell still, he pulled his fingers out of her ass and wrapped his arms around her body, holding her to him with profound strength as he started to fuck her, growling into her collarbone.

“Do it again,” he ordered, “Cum for me.” He felt the muscles of her torso clamp and unclamp around him a second time, and she cried out. Rising from the chair with his arms still wrapped around her, he exited the cockpit and only made it as far as the narrow foyer of the command shuttle en route to the sleeping quarters before he slammed her back against the wall. Grabbing her legs, he pinned them up against the wall on either side of her.

“Is this what you had in mind?” he growled, as he began to slowly, but mercilessly fuck her.

“Oh- yes- fuck- Kylo-” She cried each word with one of the earth-shattering thrusts that slammed her repeatedly into the wall, but could barely form the words.

“You think you’ll survive four hours of this?” he goaded her. But her cries had devolved into incoherence and she clamped down onto him yet again, lost in rapture. Looping his arms under her knees, he carried her the rest of the way into the sleeping quarters still speared on his cock. Before he was aware of what was happening, though, he was sitting down on the cot there and felt some invisible push to lie down.

“Why don’t you take a moment,” she panted, grinning at him. Prone on the cot and suddenly unable to move, Kylo groaned as Kane swiveled ever so slowly, leaning back to watch his expression change from surprise to a flash of anger which melted into pleasure. “And watch.” His dark, smoldering gaze was transfixed on her hips as she moved them, her hand reaching down to touch the bright red bud of her clit. As she pleasured herself on top of him, he felt his cheeks flush at the strange rush of being pinned down, used almost like a toy. She started to lift up and then sit down on him, and watching his entire impressive length disappear inside her nearly pushed him over the edge.

“Fuck,” he swore as her hand began to move rapidly over her clit, and the familiar sequence of her orgasm cresting began. Then, he did lose it, and moans and expletives rushed out of him as he spilled his seed inside her. She finally stopped moving, and sat back on top of him with a contented sigh.

“Four hours, huh?” she teased him. 

“Give me twenty minutes,” he growled in return. She only cocked a brow at him, then slid off his cock and laid gently down on top of him lengthwise. He shifted her up closer to his face to kiss her hungrily, one arm wrapping around her waist and the other hand holding her face.

“We will eventually fight over orders, you know,” she said finally, after their lips parted.

“I know.”

“Jokes aside, I don’t think we should fuck in front of the high command.”

“Sadly, you’re right. Though they couldn’t say anything if we did.”

“I don’t want to… distract them from their purpose,” Kane elaborated coyly.

“Oh,” Kylo replied, smirking. “I see.”

“It may behoove us to separate our areas of expertise a little. Divvy up the duties of Supreme Leader according to our strengths. Smaller decisions we could… make separately if we have to.” Her face betrayed her discomfort at the idea of abandoning total control. 

“But make the important ones together?” he added, not unaware of his own discomfort about the same subject.

“Exactly.” She sighed. “Don’t you think?”

“Hm,” he murmured, turning the thought over in his head. “Okay. We’ll work on that. See how it goes.”

“Trusting each other, you mean?” Her cloudy gray gaze fell on him from a serious expression.

“Yes. Like we once did.” His finger rose to stroke her cheek. When he thought of their past, he could almost feel the sense of trust that had once been there.

“Yeah. I feel it too.” Of course, she meant both the fear and the intense desire to trust him, since her memories had returned after the death of their former master. Everything about how they had once worked together felt like an old, sore muscle being woken up and used again. She wondered if it would ever not feel sore anymore, if the unease of all that time apart and the influence of Snoke would ever melt away into familiar heat. 

“We don’t have to do anything the same way it was done before, Kane. You and I have always been connected. Together we could be limitless,” he murmured. She wanted to fall into his dark, sad eyes, but instead she only smiled a small, hopeful smile at him. They laid there awhile, and Kylo wondered at how little he had heard all the voices that had so constantly whispered to him since he was young as of late. Just as he thought that, though, he caught a harsh whisper.

** _You can still fall. _ ** He felt his body tense, catching himself before he responded to the voice to shut up aloud.  ** _You can still fail._ **

“Kylo? Is something wrong?” Kane asked him, lifting her head from where it had been nestled on his chest. Her brow was knit with worry. 

“It’s nothing,” he reassured her. A lifetime of living with the voices had taught him not to acknowledge them as real, and he was filled with the sharp new fear of losing his credibility as Supreme Leader if ever he failed to do so.  ** _Kylo Ren, the Mad King of the galaxy_ ** . He took a long, deep, slow breath and let it out just as slowly. The whisper faded as he felt a gentle hand touch his cheek.

“Alright,” she said softly to him, and he knew it was her acknowledging that he did not owe her an explanation, but that he was still welcome to give one. Her concerned expression was more like the ones in his memories than any of her other expressions. 

“I love you,” he said. She smiled.

“I know.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's the end of this fic and i am sad T-T but, once Rise of Skywalker hits theaters, you can bet the last fic in the series will be on its merry way. if you like this, your comments and feedback and kudos are all greatly appreciated!!


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